Advice on Temp Controlled Fermenter Chamber

Hi All!

I recently convinced the wife to let be buy a chest freezer for the garage. The intention was primarily for temp controlled fermentation, but I also wanted to dual purpose as a keezer (bottling was a major reason I took a break from the hobby for a year). The chest freezer is 7 cu. ft:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/chest-freezer-specs-layouts-377518/index2.html#post4731050

That being said, I am trying to figure out how to best go about getting the best of both worlds and thought I would see if anyone has any perspective that could help. There are the ideas I am thinking about.

1) Place a carboy on the compressor hump, which will allow me to put three kegs into the freezer, but will require a tall collar. Will also require me to put a Fermwrap around the carboy. This also has the issue that the Fermwrap will leak heat, which will make the compressor work harder.

2) Put the carboy in the main portion of the freezer, which will not require as tall of a collar, but will only allow 2 kegs and will not require as large of a collar. Also has the same compressor work harder problem.

3) Place a cooler on the hump and pump out cold water to a CoolZone or SS Brewtech FTSs system. Advantage to this is I can easily fit 3 or 4 kegs, but will require additional resources outside the freezer. Has the benefit of not requiring me to warm a carboy while cooling a chest freezer for the kegs. I worry about condensation issues with putting a water tank in the keezer.

4) Forgot the idea of kegging all together and solely use the chest freezer for fermenting. No sure I need a freezer this big though. Only typically have 1 brew fermenting at a time.

Looking forward to the feedback!

 

Speaking to item number three above. I really wanted to do a top freezer/bottom fridge build, with the freezer used as a glycol chiller and run lines to separate fermentation chambers, one for lagers and one for ales. And then use the bottom fridge part for 5 or six kegs in a traditional kegerator setup. When I put the cost of building something like that on a spreadsheet it came out to well over $600 for everything I envisioned (and that was just for the glycol chilled fermenter part of it.) Not to mention, I would have to engineer a unique solution to a unique situation I had never had to solve before. But, hey, I'm always up for a challenge, right?

I came to my senses though, and the next day I bought a $25 chest freezer on CL to use as a fermentation chamber. (I almost bought a second one for $35 this afternoon, but I figured I better finish the first one, or I'll have hell to pay with SWMBO!)

I'll be starting the build tomorrow or Monday. I don't think anything I do will be ground breaking, but I will do a build thread with a parts list, as I've found these sorts of things extremely helpful to me. I, in turn, hope to help someone else out by doing one.

As for one and two above, if you need to build a collar, go with the larger one. The extra effort required to put in a larger collar is minimal compared to the overall effort of having to install a collar in the first place. As for using the Fermwrap, wrap the whole thing in an insulating blanket so the heat loss is as small as possible. I believe the freezer will be able to handle the heat leak just fine. This is the best way to go of the things you are considering, IMHO.

 

This is similar to how I used to do it. I had a thread on it here. http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/fermentation-temp-control-cheap-432191/

Since then I've moved on to adapt my system to using peltier coolers instead of the water in the keezer. The peltiers are a bit under powered, but get the job done just fine for ale fermentation.

I abandoned the keezer heat sinc because having to locate my fermenters next to my keezer, as well as the excessive condensation in my keezer to be a problem.