Fermentation Chamber partially built

So I get a few months out of the year here that I can ferment at good temps either in my house or in my garage. I hate doing it in my house because there isn't much room and it often gets messy. My garage is freezing cold 6 months out of the year, and extremely hot for a few months in the summer. So I needed a fermentation chamber.

I used some foam insulation board from my local building supply, an ebay temperature controller, and a small cheap heater. I haven't finished the build, I'm going to enclose it with plywood, and when I come across a cheap enough mini fridge I'll gut it for cooling. So far this has been keeping my fermenting beer at 68 degrees pretty consistently. Here's some pictures.




The box was $10 at home depot and I wired up outlets on either side. This side is for heating. The other side is for cooling.




The space heater was $10 at home depot and works great. Once the beer is up to the right temp it hardly ever turns on.


I can fit two buckets (or carboys) in the chamber, and I'll probably expand the chamber a bit so I can fit the heater and the cooling elements inside with two vessels fermenting.


I have a lot of work still to get it where I want, but this is a good start (functioning anyway). I'll update with more pics as I go.

sweet! nicely done, glad to see it keeping temps without any problem.

Yeah, it's doing really well so far, and it will only get better. I have some expanding foam for the large cracks in the side, and some sealant for the rest. I also have some weatherstripping for the lid, that will be weighed down by some plywood for better sealing.

Nice! I may have to go this route sometime soon. Congrats on the results, and thanks for sharing.

Very nice how do you plan to attach the mini fridge?

Well I haven't acquired an extra mini fridge yet, so I'm not completely sure. I would like to gut it and mount the compressor and coils on the outside and put the cooling element on the inside. I've been scouring craigslist for a good deal but haven't found the right price yet. I got my mini fridge last year for $20 when school got out and the students moved away, I'm hoping to find a similar deal.

Check out this chamber. I plan to attempt this some time soon. +10 to this guy.

Very cool, I love the looks of the finished product. I want to fully enclose mine as well. The nice part about that guys setup is he can still keep some beer in the fridge! I'm just going to gut the fridge instead.

I just emailed a guy about a mini fridge on craigslist so hopefully I can get the cooling wired up soon.