Ferment ale and Serve in a chest freezer?

Hi All!

Let me start out by saying I'm new to brewing (have only done 3 extract and 1 AG brews) and new to this forum - so, howdy!

Now, it's recently come to my attention that my fiancee is not a fan of having my empty bombers and fermenter in a water bath in the dining room. That's the bad news. The good news is that she doesn't care if I spend money upgrading to a kegging system. That's good news!

I'm going to preface my question by stating that I live in a townhouse with no garage in GA, so space is at a premium and temperature is a big consideration (house sits around 75-76). With that said, I was wondering if anyone has ever used a chest freezer to both ferment ales and also served kegs from it at the same time? Basically, a dual purpose keezer. I've been looking all over the internets and this forum and have only found 1 person who's done this. His setup was basically a ~10cf chest freezer run off 1 temp control and set to serving temps. Then a second temp control ran a fermwrap around his carboy and was set to the ~68 range and had a neoprene carboy parka on it. I'm thinking of running the same system (using 6 gall BB) but before I drop a chunk of money, I was wondering:

1) What are the odds this actually works well?
2) Think I could use a GE 7.0 instead and still get the fermenter to 68ish?
3) Would it just be better to use 2 5.0's instead (1 to ferment, 1 to serve)?

Any advice/pointers/ridicule would be greatly appreciated! (OK - maybe not the ridicule part...)

Thanks everyone!

Update...found another person who has done this, so that's 2!

No advice?

rednblack_500 said:

No advice?

Click to expand...

I have 2 freezers temp controlled. If you can get away with it I'd suggest a small freezer for your fermenter and another small one for your Kegerator.

I'm sure it would work with the ferm wrap, but to me it just doesn't sound like a good idea.

Only drawback to this is you could only handle a couple brews at a time and that's if you did them on the same day.

I'll measure out the dining room today and see if I can get 2 5.0's in there instead. I think buying 2 will cost more than buying 1 bigger chest freezer, but then I'd be saving money on not buying the fermwrap and the carboy parka.

Thanks for the advice!