Another fermentation chamber build

[corcis]

First, my inspirations:
mwill07's thread
IOnceWasLegend's thread
Xakk's thread

I'm pretty good at making beer, food, and messes. Figured I should try my hand at making a fermentation chamber. My plans are pretty butt-ugly/not-to-scale, so they may not appear on here. Mostly, a lot of stupidity, wood screws, and 2x4s, so far. I picked up a circular saw, along with a bunch of lumber, came home and whacked it up into these piles:

Sizes, left-to-right: 50", 15", 32", 12", 22", all +/-1/8". I'm still new to the whole cutting-lumber deal. If I didn't have my roommate's table and clamps from a speakerbuilding project (still in progress, still not sure wtf I'm doing), I'd be in the woods as to how to cut the lumber safely/without destroying my damage deposit.

And my commentary, so far:

So, the gist of it is that the 50" pieces will be set parallel on the bottom, with the 15" pieces laying between them (not on top of them), perpendicular. The 32" pieces will become uprights, two on the left (or, what I'm calling the left in my head), four in the middle, four on the right. The top will have the 22" pieces laying across the uprights and the other 50" pieces running lengthwise. I'll pick up plywood to skin it in a week. The middle uprights will have a 'frame' built into them ('frame', because it's all really just one big frame); on the left of it will be the minifridge, on the right the fermentation chamber.

Temperature monitoring and fridge control will be managed by a Brewbit Model T, since I'm smitten with the idea of seeing my temperature profiles and playing with them. I may try to contribute to that project as well, since my day job is programming.

More as I progress!

 

[corcis]

Making more progress today, but also finding flaws.
- 3-1/2" deck screws were totally unnecessarily long. That said, this is the first wood-thing I've built, so I opted for more-holding-power and am okay with it. This relates to...
- I wish the 'B' boards, the ones between the long rails on the bottom, had been cut long enough that I could just lay them on top of the long rails. I'm having a tough time driving a screw sideways and don't really trust my ability to do it right...20 times. The long screws make it worse, because they are too long.

I bought 8 x 2'x4'x8's yesterday, cut as such:
- 4 were cut into 50", 32", and 10" boards.
- 2 were cut into 32", 32", and 22" boards.
- 1 was cut into 32", 32", 15", and 15" boards.
- 1 was cut into 12", 15", 15", 15", and 22" boards.

Next time around (it'll be soon - I need two chambers), I'll go with a slight modification to run the boards across the 50" pieces, so it's easier to deal with.

 

[corcis]

BACK TO IT!
I managed to ignore this project for almost a month (because that's how I do every project) and walk around it a lot without going nuts. Then I found myself with free time today and an itch to finish it.

So, the first shot below shows:
- Awful tolerances. I think there's a half-inch between the floor and one of the corners, so you can rock the stupid thing.
- The general shape of it.
- And the fridge's place in the structure.

This next shot shows the first wall going in. I learned that aluminum tape is sharp, that foam is pretty darn easy to work with, provided you have a good knife, and that dang-I'm-close-to-finishing-this-phase. Once I get the foam board in, I'll move on to mounting the door. Because it's me, the door will be mounted poorly and in the most slapdash fashion.

 

[Demus]

Slapdash. I like that! Can I use it?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[corcis]

Slapdash. I like that! Can I use it?

Go for it - I think it's fairly common anyhow.

Back to working on this - I've finished three of the walls in the chamber, setup the door mounts (they're baaaaaad), and put the fridge in the frame. I'm without a powerstrip liberator (which will allow me to control the fridge and a small fan on the same outlet) for a couple days, so I am holding off on finishing the project until then. I'll probably finish it during the brew day this weekend and put the batch right in.

 

[tiltednotion]

What kind of insulation are you using?

 

[Demus]

You might want to get it going before your brew day. Monkeying around with a new DIY while brewing can lead to off flavors!!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Jman_01]

Looking nice. I made one similar last year but a tad larger. It works great


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[Inkleg]

Take it from another with no wood working skills.

That's not looking half bad.

 

[corcis]

You might want to get it going before your brew day. Monkeying around with a new DIY while brewing can lead to off flavors!!!

Seriously! I really just need an hour, tops, to get it done, so I'll hold off brewing if it comes to that.

Tiltednotion: I'm using the 2" thick, R8.5, foam from Lowe's. I picked out the 2"x2'x8' boards to simplify cutting it in their parking lot and two of those boards will be just slightly too more than I need.

 

[corcis]

I finished this up today! The door was mounted on the sort of shoddy mount. On the next go around (I'll need another one of these), I'm going to build it a proper rail and actually frame the door up. I went through about half a roll of aluminum tape, 1 and 2/3 of the foam boards. All but ~2' of the 2x4s got used up.

The little red fan on top is plugged into a plug liberator that will also plug the fridge in.

The real trick on the door was to go even simpler than I thought. I figured mounting hardware and a gate latch or something, but the hardware store guy suggested a simple baby latch.

I'll post up a screenshot of the temperature profile from Brewbit and let everyone know how it performs!

 

[corcis]

The upper one is my upright freezer, which has 3 x 6.5g carboys, but is not managing active fermentation and is holding at 45 (grumble grumble, the pilsner did not ferment out, grumble). It's significantly more capable of chilling. The lower is the chamber, managing 1 x 6.5g fermenter with Edwort's Pale Ale in it at 65. It's pretty respectable.