Ferm chamber probe placement

[djonesax]

I am about to do my first test on my fermentation chamber. I plan to fill the fermenter with water and tape the probe to the side of the fermenter with a little bit some something to insulate it. I got to thinking about cold crashing temps and it seems like it might take a long time to cool 10 gallons of beer from 65 to 32. If I were to let it go with out stepping the temp down over a few days, could I damage the compressor or freeze anything else in the fermentation chamber?

Thanks,

David

 

[Rockn_M]

I tape mine with blue painters tape then cover it with a random coozie I found. It can take a while to cool things down and your freezer walls will freeze. If you only have the one fermentor in the freezer it won't matter too much. If there are other items in there you don't want to freeze stepping down temps over a few hours is probably best.

 

[day_trippr]

First, don't skimp on the probe insulation and just use a folded paper towel or a piece of bubble wrap. Probe isolation from ambient is just as important as good thermal conduction to the vessel.

Beyond that, if you've plugged your chiller into a controller, the internal thermostat will still have some effect. It'll cut out before you've over-driven the temperature in the chamber. Otoh, if you've bypassed the oem thermostat I suppose you could get excessive run times.

That said, my 17cf top-freezer ferm fridge take about 48 hours to drop a pair of 5.5g batches (in glass) from ferm temp down to ~34°F. Lots of long runs periodically interrupted by the internal thermostat reaching its limit, while the external controller still says "Ain't there yet", until the latter is finally happy.

NBD, the fridge has been doing this without apparent issue for around 5 years now.

You could certainly do steps without concern...

Cheers!

 

[djonesax]

if you've bypassed the oem thermostat I suppose you could get excessive run times.

I have indeed completely bypassed the internal thermostat and added in a STC-1000 to control the compressor.

 

[day_trippr]

I'd then be inclined to do the step-wise crash...

Cheers!