Son of a Chill

My usually cool basement has not been so cool lately with the temps in the 90's here in the Seattle area. My beer has had some interesting off flavors to vouch for that. I had to build one. A son of a fermentation chiller. I built it just as the plans call for. My cutting of the foam was a bit wonky but it will do. It's working great. Air temp is hovering around 60 and the beer that was 74ish earlier today is now creeping to happy temps of 64. All is good now and I'm digging the SOFC

I debated building one of these, and did a lot of research on pros and cons of different ways to achieve temp control. I finally settled on a chest freezer with a Johnson A419 because of cost, time, and ease. I live in a small apartment, and have very limited access to any kind of tools, so I would have had to kludge a SOFC. I picked up a brand new 5 cu. ft. freezer for 80 bucks on ebay (originally over 300 dollars) because it had a dent in it. A pre-wired A419 was roughly the same price, so all in all I spent a little more than $150 on my set up. Now I can keep my beer in the low 60s, even when the ambient temps in my stuffy apartment reach into the high 80s.