New fermentation chamber build - Page 10

TwoHeadsBrewing · 04-28-2010, 05:43 PM

I have a friend who did this. His cooling source was a chest freezer. He put a temp controller on the freezer to keep it at 35F for lagering and serving kegs. He had two 120mm computer fans that were hooked up to a thermostat which he set for 50-60F. Those fans were mounted on the wooden collar of his keezer and blew the air through a pair of 4" insulated ducting into his plywood insulated fermentation chamber. It was very similar to the build listed above, but using a chest freezer instead of an A/C unit.

balvey · 05-03-2010, 03:23 PM

Ok, well I've started my build. So far I've got the base and the top put together. I'm going to work on the side supports and doors tonight or tomorrow.

I'm making it a mobile unit by building the base with a floor that is long enough for the chamber, the fridge, & CO2 tank. All of that is on casters. The whole thing is about 6.5' in length. The height is going to be about 3.5' from ground to counter/bar top and just about 6'' deeper than the Magic Chef mini fridge at around 25''.

I'm lining it with 2'' pink extruded poly-styrene and going to put a divider inside to make the serving chamber 24'' wide and the ferment chamber 28'' wide. I'm thinking the divider is going to have two holes at the top in each corner. One with a thermostat controlled pc fan blowing into the serving chamber. The other will have a baffle going down to bottom of each side. That way cold air at the bottom can't continuously flow to the ferment chamber.

I'm thinking I'm going to do a coffin tower to mount the taps. I'll either have 3 or 4, I had planned on 4 but I didn't take into account the 2'' thickness of the insulation, so I may not be able to fit 4 kegs but it'll be close.

The ferment chamber should fit two buckets or 3 to 4 kegs.

I'm just having a little trouble figuring out how to control the temp of the lines going to the taps once they are outside of the serving chamber up into the tower. I guess I could get some pipe insulation and try that first, or try to rig up some pvc to run them through that will go down into the chamber and then fill it with GreatStuff insulation. I just don't want to make that a potential cold air leak problem.

**mikeysab** · 02-10-2011, 12:48 AM

Bumping this one for a quick question. I was going to go with the SOF design until I saw this idea. I have a 4.3 cf mini that my wife would kill me for adding to the brewery. I've been scouring Craigslist for a mini to use for this build. Anybody think one of the smaller mini fridges would work for this, like a 1.7 or 2.5, or would I need a bigger fridge? I really like this idea, but finding a cheapo mini fridge has been a bit of a task. whaddaya guys think?

marshallwms · 02-10-2011, 02:24 PM

I think the answer depends on how cold you want the chamber to be, and how large. If you want to lager a 5 gal. carboy, I don't think the 1.7 would work at all, and the 2.5 might be iffy at best. You are probably better off being patient. When the college school year ends, there are usually a bunch of 4.3 cf sized fridges available on CL.

uabericm · 02-27-2011, 04:04 PM

I just completed building my chamber and I'm having issues getting the chamber to drop below 48*. The fridge stays on the entire time and it just won't drop. I cannot find any leaks, but when I built the chamber I have the fridge enclosed except for the back and 1" up the side. Am I "choking" fridge, not allowing it to release it's heat, so it can't cool?

**stratslinger** · 03-07-2011, 03:59 PM

To the OP:

Just yesterday I acquired a Magic Chef mini-fridge that looks to be identical to the one you used in this build - and I plan to more-or-less duplicate your design. In your build, did you ever bend down the cooling coils, or did you leave them as-is?

I'm going to be doing up some sketches and such, trying to figure out just what I need for materials, in the hopes of doing such a build in late March or early April...

**BrewersKaramazov** · 03-07-2011, 04:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by uabericm

I just completed building my chamber and I'm having issues getting the chamber to drop below 48*. The fridge stays on the entire time and it just won't drop. I cannot find any leaks, but when I built the chamber I have the fridge enclosed except for the back and 1" up the side. Am I "choking" fridge, not allowing it to release it's heat, so it can't cool?

I just picked up a kenmore mini for my build. It radiates the heat out the sides near the back. If you have the sides insulated, it may not be able to get rid of the heat. If you can pull it out and run it, you will quickly be able to feel where the heat is being released.

There is also a bunch of great math on here that you can do to figure out the difference from your ambient temp. You may not be able to get much lower.

**nootay** · 07-06-2011, 03:05 AM

thanks for posting this! i plan on doing this in the next few weeks. i see you mentioned you need to have airspace between the insulation and the plywood. how did you create teh airspace? did you have some thin wood between the insulation and outside plywood?

**nootay** · 09-05-2011, 01:10 PM

Just about got mine done. Need to finish up the door and caulk a few places. Is it necessary to put computer fans in? If so is there a write up on the wiring of them?

-MG- · 01-16-2012, 04:44 PM

Is this method still viable if you were planning to use this to ferment 2 12 gal batches in sankes at around 48 degrees? What about if you wanted to lager, would it just burn out the motor?