I'm sorry in advance if I rediscovered yet another thing which everyone knows.
Some years ago, I saw ilMango's video about a bottle sorter for fishing farms (R.I.P.), which utilized a simple principle: the item enters hopper 1, which tries to put it into a brewing stand. Hopper 1 is read by a comparator, which then unlocks hopper 2 underneath hopper 1. I decided to not look up the design and improvise something that would accomplish the same task and use the same idea. I chose a horizontal design that lowers the hopper line by only one block.
I started with a classic locked hopper, but had to add a throttling hopper because the first one would get overwhelmed and allow some bottles through. I didn't put that much thought into the redstone and just luckily clicked a repeater. I couldn't even tell at which rate it works, but measured it to be 16 gt/item (tested as 80 items in 1280 gt), which amounts to half the hopper speed.
It seems to be unilaterally tileable with the Impulse's sorter (which I dislike, but vox populi). Impulse's sorter experiences a meltdown when it is attached to the output. I couldn't find a workaround that wouldn't make the setup wider or lower the hopper line. When tiling Impulse's to the input of the present sorter, one should cut the newly formed redstone line between the two, and it should work okay (this hasn't been tested extensively, but they seem to be completely isolated).
I hope that Mojang makes so that dispensers interact with cauldrons this thingy would help someone built a better sorting system!
by shedmow