toxick
Well-Known Member
So, I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this, but I'm not very mechanically savvy, so someone school me up if I'm wrong...
I bought a cheap, used Side-by-side Fridge (amana SZ22NL), thinking that I could use the freezer side for a couple of fermentation buckets and keep cold beer bottles in the fridge side. I want to hook up a nice digital thermostat, so I tore it apart tonight looking for the built-in freezer thermostat controller (which happened to be found in the most logical place, duh)...okay, so I learned a lot about how refrigerators work.
Basically, what I'm seeing is that the coils are in the bottom/back of the freezer, and there's a fan that blow the cold air upwards and distributes it. There are holes in the wall between the fridge and the freezer that allow cold air to get into the fridge. It looks to me like the freezer gets cold, and the fridge just kind of piggy-backs on that. The "temp control" for the fridge apparently just opens a little port on the back of the fridge that allows excess cold air out. There doesn't appear to be any active cooling just for the fridge.
So, basically, if I'm fermenting beer at 60 degrees in the freezer side, my bottled beers in the fridge side are never going to get colder than 60 degrees in the fridge side?
Is this right? Is there something else I should be looking for, or did I basically buy a fermentation chamber with a slightly warmer fermentation chamber attached to it?
If so, any clever ideas on what to do with this thing?
I bought a cheap, used Side-by-side Fridge (amana SZ22NL), thinking that I could use the freezer side for a couple of fermentation buckets and keep cold beer bottles in the fridge side. I want to hook up a nice digital thermostat, so I tore it apart tonight looking for the built-in freezer thermostat controller (which happened to be found in the most logical place, duh)...okay, so I learned a lot about how refrigerators work.
Basically, what I'm seeing is that the coils are in the bottom/back of the freezer, and there's a fan that blow the cold air upwards and distributes it. There are holes in the wall between the fridge and the freezer that allow cold air to get into the fridge. It looks to me like the freezer gets cold, and the fridge just kind of piggy-backs on that. The "temp control" for the fridge apparently just opens a little port on the back of the fridge that allows excess cold air out. There doesn't appear to be any active cooling just for the fridge.
So, basically, if I'm fermenting beer at 60 degrees in the freezer side, my bottled beers in the fridge side are never going to get colder than 60 degrees in the fridge side?
Is this right? Is there something else I should be looking for, or did I basically buy a fermentation chamber with a slightly warmer fermentation chamber attached to it?
If so, any clever ideas on what to do with this thing?