My DIY Ferm Chamber

[SamInNJ]

I converted an old standup freezer for my ferm chamber. It has cooling shelves so I carefully bent a couple of those back, I still need to build a flat surface for the bottom section but I think I should be able to get 4 buckets/carboys in at a time.

I hooked up a temp controller to it and set to 34 to do some cold crashing. I attached the temp probe to the outside of one of the carboys and let it run.

Everything seemed to go fine, except some of the beer bottles on the bottom shelf have frost on them. None of the liquid seems frozen as far as I can tell, some of the caps seem a little popped (my capper leaves an indentation and that is popped out on the frosted beers).

I'm assuming this happened because of a combo of the freezer temp getting lower than the setting because of the thermal mass of the carboy taking longer to cool, leaving the ambient much colder and the bottles getting close to or at freezing, also it's just those on the bottom shelves so obviously the ambient is cooler down there by some amount.

My solution was to move the temp probe to a full beer bottle instead of a carboy and to place on the bottom of the fridge.

Does the smaller bottle on the bottom solution sound reasonable HBT? Do you think those frosty beers are going to taste crappy now?

 

[The_Bishop]

You need a fan in there to circulate the air around, or you'll get stratification.

Also, why are you storing beer in your ferment chamber?

The probe is better placed on the fermenter, this way it's actually working on the beer temperature and not the chamber's air temp.

 

[SamInNJ]

I'll add a fan, that's a good idea!

I decided to throw beer in since I was cold crashing and I thought it would be better for the beer to be cold for a while. Is it better to just store in a cool part of my house?

 

[The_Bishop]

Yes, actually. You want to minimize temperature swings in your stored (or cellared) beer.

 

[SamInNJ]

Now that I've got it cold should I keep in in a fridge or is it fine to let it warm back up to cellar temps?

 

[The_Bishop]

You could let it come back to cellar temps, just try to minimize the drastic temp swings.