My Fermentation Chamber/Kegerator Build

So I have to credit this original idea to member TH who was my inspiration for this build. I had a large dorm fridge which I had previously turned into a kegerator with a single draft tower, and wanted to employ TH's idea of doubling the fridge size and being able to use it as a temperature controlled fermentation chamber. Unlike TH however, I had this vision of my chamber being able to do ale's, lagers, cold crashing, and serving all in one unit. So I took the idea of using the fridge old door, turning it sideways and doubling the chamber size as well as adding an internal divider wall to have two chambers with completely separate temperatures for multiple uses. So here it is:

Here is the first part of the build using 1.5" extruded foam insulation I picked up from Home Depot. The pieces are held together with Loctite Foam-board glue which is designed not to melt the foam with the chemicals in the glue.



Instead of leaving the foam pink, I decided to spray paint it to match my current fridge. In order to paint foam you need to use Krylon H20 latex spray paint, again to prevent the chemicals in normal spray paint from melting the foam.

And here is the finished product with the Love TSS2 Dual Stage Temperature controller mounted on the front of the fridge.



The fridge has a foam wall which can be moved from side to side to adjust the size of either side of the fridge chambers. The colder right side is used to hold corney kegs and to cold crash carboys, while the right side is used for fermentation. The middle wall has a small AC computer fan I bought from Radio Shack, with a dryer duct vent cover on one side. The duct vent prevents nearly all the cold air from moving to the warmer side until the fan kicks on, blowing open the louvers and adding cold air to the left side. The fridge compressor is controlled by one output of the Love Controller, and the fan is controlled by the other.

Great idea and execution of doubling your space and adding the fermentation cabinet to it!

Thanks Tim. For anyone else interested I just did my own temperature test to see how much of a differential this thing could hold and I am currently cold crashing a carboy on the right side at 38 degrees, and fermenting an English Pale Ale I brewed yesterday at 65 degrees on the left side and it is holding just fine. The natural temperature increase from the primary while it is fermenting raises the temperature a little, but the fan works perfectly kicking on and cooling the left side right down.

Also I found another picture I took to give yall a better idea of the interior size of this thing without the wall in there.

This is my next project! Nice job. Have you had any problems since Feb when you built it?

I will likely need to add heater as well. Any thought on how to do that?

How did you attach the new chamber to your fridge?

Very cool adaptation of TH's design! I think I am going to go this route too. I love the fact that you can adjust the foam board separator left to right and theoretically remove it entirely to fit multiple cornys (possibly even a 1/2 of commercial depending on size of fridge).

I am also interested if you have had any issues since your last posting.

Thanks for the idea!