Sherpa FE

Recipes 

malkore

Recipes 

you need a freezer plus a temperature controller (Johnson Controls, Ranco, etc)

just make sure you get a freezer big enough to fit your needs. I assume you mean chest freezer...

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primary -
secondary - empty
on tap - Marzen, Raspberry Melomel, Summer Whu-eat
bottled - Porter, Wit, Apfelwein, MOAM, Raspberry Melomel, Irish Red Braggot, 10 year old Mead, Pumpkin ale, Chianti, grape wine, Australian Chardonnay
keg aging -
empty kegs - 1
planned: Kolsch, Fruit beer, more wine, SMaSH
annual gallons: 2007=53 2008=28 2009=26
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$10 fermenter cooler - Put a chalkboard on your keg!

runhard

Recipes 

I have a chest freezer with a Johnson analog control and it works great for both a fermentation or lagering chamber. Not living in Florida but visiting once I remember fairly high humidity which might not be conducive for storing grains in the chest freezer. Moisture will cause your grains to go bad sooner, if your rolling through the grain then it might not make a difference but I tend to store grains for several months and moisture would wreak havoc. Battling condensation inside a chest freezer is a constant battle as most people use a desicsant like Damp-Rid or equivalent. Others who live in Florida might know better but here in Central Texas my chest freezer builds up a pretty fair amount of moisture so I don't want to risk my grains if I fail to change the desiccant. As a result I store the grains in a spare bedroom in 70 gallon plastic drums..........SWMBO is very tolerant as long as I make EdWort's apfelwein every once in a while.


In my opinion, if your recipe is sound the constant fermenation temperatures are a absolute requirement to obtain the flavour that you're after. One of my recipes for a hefeweizen can have very different flavours depending on the temperature of fermentation; I can change the banana or clove character by simply fermenting a few degrees cooler or warmer. For most of my recipes warmer temperatures bring out more esters or at least certain esters are more pronounced.

I also learned a lesson the hard way; if you set the controller to say 68°F the carboy will be slightly warmer due to all that wonderful biological activity going on so for mine I need to set it the controller 5°F cooler so the carboy actually maintains the desired 68°F.

Pull the trigger on the chest freezer, you won't regret it.

Jeffrey

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runhard, trainhard, raceEZ
Jeffrey

keg 1-Graham Sander's Tropical Flower Wit
keg 2-Yooper's Fat Sam - I highly recommend it
keg 3-Yooper's Fat Tire
keg 4-XXX Stout
keg 5-empty


Fermenter #1-Graham Sander's Tropical Flower Wit
Fermenter #2-empty

Got Trub?

Recipes 

In my mind good fermentation temperature control is second only to sanitation in producing reproducibly good beer. Get a temperature controller and tape the probe to the side of your fermentation vessel and cover with bubble wrap. That way you are controlling the temperature of your beer more so then the interior space of the freezer.

GT

Brett3rThanU

Recipes 

I just picked up a chest freezer yesterday, the warm weather of Houston is coming upon us.

fratermus

Recipes 

I snagged a scratch/dent smallish fridge from Home Depot last night.

I'd measured the carboy and bucket fermenters with airlock before going, so I knew it would fit. It's in the workshop on a controller from NB (johnson, IIRC).

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Adequate Mousetrap brewhouse

Batch history | yeast slants | Suspending yeast

srm775

Recipes 

I just got my 18 cu. ft. chest freezer up an running this weekend and it's awesome. I bought a Ranco digital single-stage (which is what you need) controller and hooked it up. Wiring up the extension cord to it with a clear diagram from HBT took about 40 min. and it's well worth it. Buy a Ranco digital on E-bay and an extension cord an save yourself about $30.