chest freezer

Marathon06 said:

I'm looking for the smallest chest freezer that will hold a bucket for fermentation. Most of them appear to have a lip on the bottom so although I can get the dimensions I don't typically see the interior dimensions. Any idea what size/capacity freezer I need to fit the bucket?

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dantheman13 said:

I bought the 5cu ft. freezer from GM. It is definitely big enough to hold my fermentation bucket or a glass carboy. I have seen plastic fermenters at my local homebrew store that might not fit the width, but they probably do. The lip part of it can hold a few bottles, or gallon fermenters if I want.

The only thing that bugs me about this chest freezer is that even with my temperature controller on the most limiting settings (bad for the freezer), the temperature, according to the probe, which is outside of the fermenter and dangling without touching the walls of the freezer, drops a good 12-14 degrees. Fortunately, this doesn't seem to effect the beer temperature, according to the thermometer sticker on my fermenter. I sit my fermenter on top of a book so that it doesn't touch the bottom of the freezer directly.[/QUOTE]

bad idea to have it just sit on the bottom?

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edie said:

dantheman13 said:

I bought the 5cu ft. freezer from GM. It is definitely big enough to hold my fermentation bucket or a glass carboy. I have seen plastic fermenters at my local homebrew store that might not fit the width, but they probably do. The lip part of it can hold a few bottles, or gallon fermenters if I want.

The only thing that bugs me about this chest freezer is that even with my temperature controller on the most limiting settings (bad for the freezer), the temperature, according to the probe, which is outside of the fermenter and dangling without touching the walls of the freezer, drops a good 12-14 degrees. Fortunately, this doesn't seem to effect the beer temperature, according to the thermometer sticker on my fermenter. I sit my fermenter on top of a book so that it doesn't touch the bottom of the freezer directly.[/QUOTE]

bad idea to have it just sit on the bottom?

Click to expand...

I couldn't tell you for sure, but I know that when the chest freezer turns on, the bottom and sides of the freezer get very cold. I made a yeast starter the other day and let it sit on the shelf (no stir plate), and a lot of the yeast seemed to settle at the bottom after a day. That might be normal, but I don't want to take any chances on having the bottom of the fermenter too cold.

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