Chest Freezer Fermentation Chamber

Who out there is using chest freezers for fermentation? How big should I get? Any pics? Thanks

 

I am. I have a Holiday 5 cu ft chest freezer. It only fits 1 carboy at a time and I put the blowoff bucket on the shelf. Wish I had gone bigger, but maybe someday I'll get a bigger one and this will be a lagering fridge.

I have a 2 stage ranco controller and a fermwrap taped to the inside of the freezer.

 

I thought about it, but since I'll be fermenting 10 gal batches in sankes I didn't feel like lifiting them up and into a chest freezer... Would have been far easier than making my own cabinet though, that's for sure.

 

I've got the GE7cf it fits two buckets or two 6 gallon better bottles. I use the johnson controls digital controller. Works great.

 

I used to have a 15 cu foot chest freezer. It worked great and I could have fit probably 4 6.5 gallon carboys on the floor. It stopped working and I wanted more garage space for other things, so I just picked up a 6 cu foot chest freezer. I can fit 2 carboys or 4 corny kegs on the floor - but this one doesn't have a hump so I need to add a collar to the top in order to fit airlocks (I can use blowoffs for now).

I like the smaller footprint and even when I had my 15 cu foot one I never used more than 10-15 gallons in there at a time - so it was really overkill.

 

I have this Chest Freezer and I use it with a temp controller. It fits 2 carboys though I've been using with 1 carboy and 1 bucket. I'm paranoid about bumping 2 carboys together. My blowoff bottle (I use a 1G bottle for that) sits on the hump. Only done a couple batches in it so far but seems to work well. Lifting over the freezer side is less of an issue for me that lugging my beer upstairs where I keep the damn thing.

 

theonetrueruss, *bow, thanks for confirming what I need. This sounds perfect and I have been eyeballing this fridge for weeks after just missing one on craigslist in my area. I was hoping a smaller unit would work, but I don't think the 7.2 unit will work as nicely.

Some pictures of 7.2 in use for this would be lovely to see if it does work really well for people, but I have yet to locate anyone posting about it.

 

Ive got a 7 cu ft Holiday and it fits two ale pales. I wish i could of got the 9 but it was too big for the space I was putting it.

 

I use a 7.0 cubic foot GE. Holds 2 6-gallon better bottles with regular airlocks and is easy for me to lift over the edge. I'm 27 though.

 

can you not fit another bucket on the hump? if you made a shelf for it? or is it too tall?

 

It would be tough. The top of the first carboy is past the height of the shelf, so I would be sort of stacking them on each other. The really isn't a ton of space in this chest freezer.

 

Can you take a picture of your setup?

 

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn176/stevo155/FermentChamber.jpg

Not a great picture because the carboy isn't in there, but it's all I have right now.

 

Thanks. I am picking up a second chest freezer tonight to ferment it looks like I will only be able to do one at a time but maybe I can do primary fermentation in it and the after yeast fermentation in my closet that stays pretty consistent.