In May, I moved into a small apartment. This required some creative thinking in order to store all our of items.
So I began with a design to store all the completed beer bottles and my tools / other misc items in the bedroom closest. Sorry about the blurry photo, it's all I have left of the design...
Which I share because you really can't see what's going on with it installed.
The two side pods were built as stand alone units and connected across the stop. Each shelf can hold 27 12oz bottles or some combination of 22oz bombers/750ml bottles
These are the supports for each shelf
Then I had the bright idea to enclose the bottom with insulation and turn it into a semi-controlled fermentation chamber
opened up, it's large enough for two fermentation vessels. Behind the ice bottle is a fan controlled with the DIY STC-1000 that many others have posted instructions on. I haven't bothered to secured the two pieces. Just slide them together to close and apart to open.
The 1/2 gal bottles last about 1/2 a day during heavy fermentation and a full day when things have slowed down. Of course, this is also dependent a little on the room temperature.
It's not pretty. but it serves its purpose. The only issue I've noticed so far is when fermentation slows, the temp tends to drop below the target value since the ice chamber isn't separate. I suppose I could set the temp a little higher or work on including a heating circuit. This is why I wrote semi-controlled above.
So I began with a design to store all the completed beer bottles and my tools / other misc items in the bedroom closest. Sorry about the blurry photo, it's all I have left of the design...
Which I share because you really can't see what's going on with it installed.
The two side pods were built as stand alone units and connected across the stop. Each shelf can hold 27 12oz bottles or some combination of 22oz bombers/750ml bottles
These are the supports for each shelf
Then I had the bright idea to enclose the bottom with insulation and turn it into a semi-controlled fermentation chamber
opened up, it's large enough for two fermentation vessels. Behind the ice bottle is a fan controlled with the DIY STC-1000 that many others have posted instructions on. I haven't bothered to secured the two pieces. Just slide them together to close and apart to open.
The 1/2 gal bottles last about 1/2 a day during heavy fermentation and a full day when things have slowed down. Of course, this is also dependent a little on the room temperature.
It's not pretty. but it serves its purpose. The only issue I've noticed so far is when fermentation slows, the temp tends to drop below the target value since the ice chamber isn't separate. I suppose I could set the temp a little higher or work on including a heating circuit. This is why I wrote semi-controlled above.
