Cheap Fermentation Chamber

Nice job
I was going to try that myself at one time as i had difficulty finding something the right size to fit into basement that would hold my conical.
But in end I found freezer that fit into my basement.

I use the same controller and hooked it straight into the freezer omitting the freezers own thermostat. that gave me the ability to have a always Live socket and a heat socket inside the freezer.

I was thinking about something very similar... I was going to build it out of soem solid birch (i have some extra laying around) then insulating the inside.. but.. for refridgeration... i was going to buy a used 12v dc camping cooler.. and pull the refridgerant device off (its got a fan and all) and attach to the top... and use a laptop power supply with a temp controller on/off device...

Dr1nkBeer said:

I was thinking about something very similar... I was going to build it out of soem solid birch (i have some extra laying around) then insulating the inside.. but.. for refridgeration... i was going to buy a used 12v dc camping cooler.. and pull the refridgerant device off (its got a fan and all) and attach to the top... and use a laptop power supply with a temp controller on/off device...

Click to expand...

The only problem I could see arising is that a camping cooler may not be able to cool more than 1 carboy efficiently, and it might burn out its compressor.

I just put my lager in 10 gallons of Oktoberfest, and It was able to bring it down from 70 degrees down to about 54 degrees in about 4 hours.

Good point. They claim to be able to hold temp 10 -20 degrees below ambient temps.. My basement is just around 60 all year long but creeps to 70 in summer. Its goo enough for all other brews pretty much... Its a cheap enough project and could always upgrade the refrigerant device if it fails to perform. But def. a good point..

Remember that with fermentation, you're not just dealing with ambient temperatures. Yeast create heat during their process and although it's only a few degrees depending on what you're brewing, it's that much more energy you need to pull out of the chamber.

I'd like to know how many BTU's yeast put out based on how many of them they are. It would be interesting.

divi2323 said:

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I'd like to know how many BTU's yeast put out based on how many of them they are. It would be interesting.

Click to expand...

Hi

X pounds of water (15 gal x 8 = 120 lb) times Y degree ( say 2) = 240 btu's. How many BTU's per hr depends a lot on how fast the fermenter sheds heat.

They invented BTU's to make that particular calculation easy.

Bob

carlisle_bob said:

Hi

X pounds of water (15 gal x 8 = 120 lb) times Y degree ( say 2) = 240 btu's. How many BTU's per hr depends a lot on how fast the fermenter sheds heat.

They invented BTU's to make that particular calculation easy.

Bob

Click to expand...

Pulling out my engineering nerd-ness, I looked up in my old Thermodynamics book, and water is 8.34 lbs/gallon at 60 degrees.

at 200 degrees it is 8.0 lbs/gallon.

Just a quick update. The fridge has been holding at 54 degrees, for the past week, while the ambient temperature inside has been ~ 80 (its been 104 outside and the House AC can't keep up). But anywho, after it hit, it has only been running about 50% of the time. I touched the insulation, and the part where the front comes off where I have the tape, I can feel that as cold. I may have to try to figure out how I can better the insulation, Maybe one of those emergency blankets, or stuff the inside with the cheap 1/4 inch foam.

So it has been holding at about 5.3 degrees for about 2 weeks now. I figured out it was because the temp probe that is placed on the freezer panel is causing the fridge compressor to shut off, and shutting off at a higher temp than my temp controller. I ended up just letting the mini-fridge temp controller dangle inside, away from the freezer panel. Hopefully this allows me to bring it down closer to 1-2 degrees, and doesn't burn my compressor out.

So... I think I found the real reason that my temp was slowly rising by about 0.5 degrees per week...

The freezer panel has Iced up, I think it was because I turned off the fan to see if I could drop the temp to 1 degree. This is not going to be fun to defrost....



The ice portion has even taken over about 1/4 of the fan. There is ice inside the fan!



I am not sure if this is from an evaporation from the fermenters, or if there is an air leak, or if the air when I closed it up was just that humid. But something will need to be addressed before the next lager

Long time update:
So after a move, it has survived! I wasn't able to completely seal all the holes to prevent the condensation build up. However, I did find that a way to counter this was to put the carboys in my keezer overnight after brewing, to bring the temp down to about 38, then let it warm up for a few hours then stick it in. This way the compressor only had to turn on to maintain the temp, and not to cool it down. It also helped to improve my lager taste because of the lower fermentation temps up front.