Craigslist Score.....Fermentation Chamber Almost Complete

Been on the hunt for a few weeks for a good upright freezer with no luck, but did finally come across something just as good....an upright fridge....with no freezer compartment. I already have a ebay aquarium controller, so just a little bit of wiring and a space heater to go. Some rough measurements give me 50" interior height, 27" wide, and 15" deep. By my calculations, at a minimum I can hold 4, or possibly 6 carboys. Here she is prior to the needed mods. Ran out of time but hopefully they will be done later this week. I am only hoping that the amount of crap I caught from my wife about spending the money on this will be offset by no longer catching it for having beer fermenting in the spare bedroom. I am thinking I will just install a basic wood shelf so that I have 2 levels of fermenters.

nice. I'm a craigslist junkie. Great score. How much was it?

$100.00

? for others using the ebay aquarium controller, what differential are you setting between the heat & cool functions? I want to keep the temp pretty tight, but not have the heat & cool functions fighting each other.

Nice score!!!!!! Luv searchin craigslist. For those that do not know go to http://www.searchtempest.com/

Set up a search and bookmark it and it will search a wider area and pull up multiple city listings in one click.

I am working on building something like this out of an upright freezer. Can I get a link to the controller and/or the DIY thread you recommend? There are so many...

autobaun70 said:

? for others using the ebay aquarium controller, what differential are you setting between the heat & cool functions? I want to keep the temp pretty tight, but not have the heat & cool functions fighting each other.

Click to expand...

.5 degrees

Damn that is a nice score! Cheers to that

Did some tinkering with the controller this evening, still debating how I want to run the wires into the box, I don't want to cut it up too bad in case I need to use it as a plain fridge in the future. I am thinking of probably just running them through the wall and using a conduit clamp inside & out to make sure the wires don't get pulled on, and seal it up with silicon.

I would like to go with the 6 gallon ported better bottles for fermenters. I should be able to fit 3 on the top shelf, and 2-3 on the bottom shelf. I can't imagine I will have that many fermenting at once. My thought with the better bottles is to be able to do 10 gallon batches, split into 2 fermenters and put on the top shelf. Once fermented out, just drop the temp and cold crash them in place. Then just open up the valves to fill the kegs without ever moving them......no siphoning required which means less time required. I am currently using a 1/4 slim Sanke, but cleaning it is a bit hard and time consuming.

That top shelf looks like glass, will it be able to handle 3 fermenters? Maybe you could replace the glass with something sturdier?