Hi all, I was planning on saving for a keg a system which I still am but after reading around it seemed that temperature controlled fermentation was highly recommended, I live in the south so it's now almost too hot in my house to ferment at all and I decided to try a DIY project to cool my fermenting beer. I had 2 thermoelectric coolers laying around that dont really work right, so I took one, stood it upright and pulled the cooling unit out the top, scrapped some pieces off the other and got it running with the cooling unit now mounted in the door. I bought a stc1000 thermostat with relays off eBay and built a temperature control unit for about 35 bucks total. My 5 gallon glass Carboy fits inside perfectly with just the top poking though the hole in the top of the cooler, I've closed the hole up with a towel wrapped around the Carboy neck and got the temp to 26F degrees below ambient in 24 hrs. Not much for lagers in the summer but I'm planning on brewing an ale next week with this rig. My only issue is that a 5 gallon glass Carboy has only about half a gallon of headspace so for the belgian wit I want to brew that's a little under par. Does anyone know how a 6 gallon or 6.5 gallon better bottle compares in outside dimensions to a 5 gallon glass? Thanks.
