Downsizing my chamber. Need Ideas

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polarbearbrewing

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So I'm moving into a new apartment in the next few months. Currently I utilize a small chest freezer with a collar and A419 controller. This size freezer allows me to fit two carboys at the same time along with some extra beer storage.

The problem: new apartment simply doesn't have the room. I don't want to have to give up my current level of temp control and am kind of at a loss for ideas on how to maintain digital temp control in a smaller package.

Any ideas?
 
Are you brewing more often than once a week? You beer only needs temperature control for the first few days, usually 3 or 4, so you can use a much smaller fermentation chamber. Since in most cases the fermentation chamber only needs to be a few degrees below that of you apartment it won't take much to keep it cool and if you keep the fermenting beer cool, the yeast's exothermic reaction is much lower too so it won't be hard to keep that under control too. One of the members on here made a chamber that was well insulated with styrofoam and used a frozen jug of water with a fan hooked to the controller to blow the air across the frozen jug and thus controlled the temperature.
 
Lots of people have adapted the basic Son of Fermentation Chiller plans to fit in limited space. It requires extra work to swap out the ice jugs, but does a fine job of controlling temps (especially for ales). If you're using a bi-metal thermostat to holds temps, you could probably drive the computer fan off a 9V battery and leave the chamber tucked in a closet somewhere without needing to be plugged in.
 
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