Son of a Cosmonaut's fermentation chamber

Here's my latest build,



I figured I would post it because I haven't seen one built quite this way yet. It is very similiar to a lot of other chambers out there, I just went a little different route.

Instead of removing all the guts of an old frige, I just left them attached as is and opened up the fridge like a tin can and built around it. I cut the fridge at the seams on the right side on the top and bottom and swung it out to match the back of the fridge.







From there I removed the liner (it was later reinstalled) and then I started building the new footprint. I tried to save as much of the original insulation as I could and screwed the new plywood to the base of the fridge.

Here is a view of the rear of the fridge. The side is now aligned with the back, effectively doubling the width of the fridge.



All the plywood installed is glued and screwed to some portion of the original fridge.





I then installed 1.5 inch insulation to all new construction and tried to match it up with the original insulation. After the insulation was taped off I reinstalled what was left of the original liner.

The chamber turned out real sturdy once the last of the plywood was installed. I originally was going to re-use the fridge door, but because of space limitations, I decided to just cut a new one.



I ended up wrapping the whole chamber in reflective insulation. The chamber will be stored in the house, and the room it is in gets a lot of sunlight. I am hoping this cuts down on radiant heat. It will eventually live underneath a new bar top.



I installed a single stage love temperature controller. Since it lives in the house I will not need to heat the chamber.



After I wired the chamber, ran the temp probe, reinstalled the original thermostat, and reaffixed the freezer, I cut a thick piece of plexiglass and placed it on the chamber floor.



Overall, this was a relatively cheap project. I already had the fridge so all I needed to buy was:

1- 4x8 sheet of plywood
1- 4x8 sheet of 1.5 inch insulation,
1- roll of reflective insulation (I only used half)
1- love temperature controller

The chamber ended up being 25" deep x 33.5" wide x 34" tall. I tried to keep the depth down because of space limitations but you could build it deeper if you wanted to. The chamber should fit 3 carboys, 4 or 5 cornys maybe more, or a combination of the two. I test ran it today and got the temp down to the high 30's, but did not feel like pushing it. I built it for ale fermentation so it won't have to work too hard. I'm sure I will be playing around with the temp probe placement and may look into installing a fan, but so far I am happy with how it holds temps.

that's really well done, thanks for sharing.

That's really nice....if you plan on putting it under a bar, it would be really easy to throw some wood veneer over the reflectix and give it a nice stain. Great work!

Thanks guys,

Hopefully somebody finds something useful in this thread. I wanted to give a little back to this site because lord knows I've learned tons from all you guys.

Regarding my plans for under the bar, my goal is to fit the chamber, a lagerator (another mini fridge that is barely modified) and my keezer. I plan on givining it the typical wooden front face where the panels actually swing out like doors. The chamber and lagerator will stay in place while I'll have to accomodate the keezer so I can slide it in and out to load/unload.

If that project goes well, I will post that too.

Nice build. I'll start finishing my basement this year (need to repair some foundation cracks and wrap the foundation first) and was planning on a similar under under bar fermentation build. Two actually, one for lagers. Plus two kegarators for different temps. Lots of big dreams.