Todd, please move this to the right forum if I am in the wrong place.
Hello all, I apologize if there has been another thread on this. I could not find it if so. My wife and I are remodeling/ building our likely final home and have the opportunity to do what we want. We will have our normal dishwashers, but are considering adding a single high speed commercial type under counter dishwasher for wine glasses after parties, maybe in a corner of the kitchen or a nearby pantry. Does anyone have any experience in doing this for a home and your thoughts WRT noise, brands, reliability, practicality, is it a good idea, etc?
I don’t entertain on that scale, but the only truly practical use I can think of is when you are having such a large wine tasting or multi-course dinner where you would need to reuse plates or stemware during the event itself. Otherwise, once the event is over, you have all the time in the world to clean up.
We use in restaurant setting, and only use rainwater, but you can fit RO units if rainwater is not an option.
Not sure what brands are available in your market but Hobart are good and reliable. 60 and 120s cycles at 90C, 70C rinse, but you do need to dry them on exit.
Teh Winterhalter range are also highly regarded and they do have some models that they say remove the need to dry the glasses.
I’ve been using these machines for more than a decade now in different offsites.
In my experience the only dishwasher type that consistently breaks stems is a normal household dishwasher that one offsite installed instead of a bar-type commercial dishwasher. All the other offsites have commercial dishwashers and I’ve never seen them break a single stem during these +10 years.
There is literally nothing that could break a glass in a commercial dishwasher - there’s just a water jet. If you have a proper rack where the glasses sit nicely, they just get cleaned. In a normal household dishwasher there’s a lot more room for a glass to move and break unless you have a special wine rack where the glasses sit, but even then the amount of glasses you can clean in a normal household dishwasher is minimal compared to a commercial one.
I prefer Miele dishwashers but you just need the proper racking system and make sure the glasses are spaced properly. Never had any expensive glasses break, only one or two cheap Costco ones.
Having a tasting room, we have a little experience with commercial glass washers. Below are a couple of considerations - since this is a new build, it will be much easier to install than retrofitting into an existing space.
Make sure the flooring is not hardwood near the unit as they throw off a lot of steam/moisture when you open the door (more than a normal household washer).
You will still need to polish the stems after washing.
Get the proper rack size to fit the stems you use. They make several different racks to fit stems - make sure the bowl size matches your stems. You can add additional rack collars to fit different stem heights, but the width of slots for the bowls is key.
If you are planning to use this to clean stems, plates, etc. you need to make sure the machine you purchase not only cleans stems but can also handle food. Some do not contain grinders or filters.
Make sure you get a pump (not gravity) unit as gravity units need to be elevated and can flood.
They are noisy but the cycle is very quick (most are less than 3 minutes to clean/sanitize).
You may need a heating booster on the waterline feeding the glass washer depending upon the heating element inside the washer. I would go with a high temperature unit as you will not need detergent to clean/sanitize. We use only citric acid on our stems which prevents water spots.
You may need a special drain installed as most units come with drain hosing similar to a clothes washer.
As someone else mentioned, Hobart is a good brand and so is Jackson. We have a Jackson Dishstar High Temperature washer, which will run you about $6K for the unit without plumbing or installation. This unit runs a cycle in about 3 minutes and fits about 30 stems in our racking.
Katom Restaurant supply is a good source. They are very easy to work with and have good pricing. They sometimes run sales too. https://www.katom.com
If you throw a lot of parties, they are worth it. Let me know if you need more info. Cheers - Karen
No, I’ve had it happen at a restaurant when I brought my stems for an event and they washed them using their dishwasher. They were even the Grassl second string stems that are a bit thicker, not even the Vigneron. Two broke in the first load so they washed the rest by hand. They said the commercial dishwasher was too high pressure or something.
A commercial glass washer is definitely a luxury item but if you have the resources and space I would do it. We throw a lot of wine/dinner parties and wind up hand washing stems. I wish I had thought of this when we built. Looks like Katom has a basic commercial washer for around $2K but I am not familiar with this brand and it is a gravity drain unit MoTak DSP3 High Temp Rack Undercounter Glass Washer w/ (30) Racks/hr Capacity, 208-240v/1ph
So in your case we have a case of random glasses fitting poorly the glass rack. You probably shouldn’t wash them in such a washing machine if you don’t know whether they fit properly or not. Or then the restaurant used a dishwasher meant for dishes like plates and cutleries, not for wine glasses - otherwise this machine would’ve been grinding wine glasses with its “too high pressure” on a regular basis.
A normal, properly operating commercial dishwasher designed for washing wine glasses and fitted with a rack that is suited for the wine glasses isn’t going to be breaking any wine glasses, no matter how thin or thick they are.
You shouldn’t extrapolate from a random lousy experience that “commercial dishwashers often break nice stems” because that just isn’t true.
It doesn’t. But I just googled that product and now I’m wondering if I can just buy that $30 piece (or a couple of them) and add it to my washer. Will have to do some more googling. Thanks.
PS. I know that David from GV doesn’t recommend this, but hand washed 7 GV universals yesterday after a fun night on Saturday.
