planning basement fermentor project

[twd000]

I need to get a temperature-controlled fermenter setup in the unheated portion of my basement. I am at the planning stage and could use some advice

Right now, the basement is 45 degrees; in the summer it can reach 70 with the dehumidifier running, so I will need both heating and cooling capability.

So I will need a 2-stage controller - is the Inkbird-308 ($35) the current preferred option? Several years ago I used an STC-1000 on another project, but those seem to have fallen out of favor...

I have a 10"x20" seedling heater mat that outputs 17W - do you think that will be enough to go from 45 to 65 for fermenting in the winter? Or do I need something with higher output?

Although I would like to keep the footprint small, I decided against an upright freezer since I'm not sure I could fit two 6.5-gallon carboys without damaging the coils in the shelves.

So I'll plan on a chest freezer. I would like it to be dual-use to store excess garden produce or freeze meat when I'm not brewing anything. Are there any 5-cubic foot freezers that can accommodate two 6.5-gal carboys? Or one 6.5 and one 5-gal? Or do I need to go up to 7 cubic feet?

How am I going to get this thing down the basement steps? I don't have an exterior bulkhead, so it will need to go down the interior steps. I got my kegerator fridge down there with an appliance dolly, but that was upright. WIll I damage the chest freezer by tipping it on the edge to strap to the dolly?

Has anyone tried those shoulder moving straps to carry a 7 cubic foot chest freezer down a flight of stairs?

 

[mongoose33]

I use the Inkbird 308. I have a refrigerator in my garage, and right now, the temps in the garage are about 45 degrees. I have on of those mats (I think mine is 21 watts) on my fermenter, tucked inside the carry straps. It's been struggling a bit to hold at 64 currently, but it's close. One way to help that is to put a towel or some such over the mat so the heat is more directed into the fermenter than to heating the entire refrigerator.

There are some benefits to a refrigerator over a chest freezer. One is that it's a lot easier to get that fermenter in it. Another is that if it's running, you can chill things in the freezer. I will chill a rack of bottles before bottling off my keezer that way.

I've included a pic below of how I do this in my fridge. The towel is wrapped around "Batch One" enough to keep the heat going into it. I was fermenting two batches sequentially, one about 3 days ahead of the other. I had two Inkbirds controlling this; the Inkbird controlling "Batch Two" was the later one, and I needed the fridge to cool it to keep ferm temps from running away. But that would have made Batch One too cold, so I added the towel over the heat mat to help keep it warmer than Batch Two, and used a second Inkbird to control the heat mat on that one.

It's not the most elegant-looking application of a towel to a fermenter, but it worked just fine.



As far as how big, cut out a couple pieces of cardboard the same diameter as your fermenters, plus an inch for straps, heat mat, etc. Take them in and lay them on the floor of the freezer you're considering and you'll be able to see if there's enough room for them. I have a friend w/ a 5 cu ft freezer made into a keezer, and he can't get more than two corny kegs in it--so I'd wonder about fermenters.

Those freezers aren't all that heavy--I have a 7-cu ft freezer in my basement serving as a keezer, and it's not that bad. We just carried it.

 

[twd000]

thanks for the reply.

my us-case would be fermenting a single split-batch (two 5-gallon batches of same recipe), so I may look at a larger heater and a single Inkbird so I can maintain the entire chamber at a uniform temperature off of one probe.