Question for those who use chest freezers for fermentation

[Improv241]

I'm struggling with a chest freezer being both a ferm chamber and a keezer. Has anyone tried to separate a chest freezer into two sections with rigid insulation?

 

[tsb22]

I have effectively rigged mine for both, but not like you are talking about.

Essentially I added a collar to the freezer, then drilled holes through the collar and attached 2" PVC and a computer fan from the freezer into an foam insulated "box" next to the freezer.
With an ebay temp controller on the fan, I can now have my keezer @ 34deg & ferm box @ 65. If you go this route just figure out how to seal everything appropriately, I have not gotten around to it yet & have about 2" of water in the bottom of my freezer every month from the room air moisture condensing on the freezer walls.

 

[gothcopter]

Most freezers run the refrigerant all around the box, so the temperature would tend to be uniform no matter how you divided it.

You could put some sort of heat source on the fermentation side, hooked up to another temperature controller. With the keezer side set at 40F, a brew belt might be able to get the other side up to 50F for some lager fermentation. If I were going to try that, I'd definitely insulate the fermentation side completely, including insulating it from the walls of the freezer itself. Not sure what the energy consumption would be, vs. two separate freezers.

 

[rack04]

I pondered this until I found another chest freezer on craigslist for less than it would cost to modify my keezer. Just a thought.

 

[user 21663]

You can give this a look. I haven't done it but I remember seeing it years ago and thought it was a cool idea

http://www.oregonbrewcrew.com/freezer/freezer.html