I am thinking of building a fermentation chamber for ales, and have considered two different ideas. The first one is to use a mini-fridge with the door removed, and a chamber built/attached to the front where the door was. I assume I would need a temp controller to keep it in my mid 60* range, but was wondering if this style of chamber would overwork the mini fridge and essentially wear it out sooner due to the larger space it will be required to cool? I found a couple of photos similar to my idea here.
The second idea would be to basically build a "son of a fermentation chamber" and instead of using ice to do my cooling, I would direct cold air through a hole cut into the door of the mini and into my chamber with a small computer fan run by a thermostat which would only extract air from the mini when needed (just like it does with the ice system in a son of a fermentation chamber) and then returned to the mini through another duct/hole in the door, thus not taxing the mini as much as idea #1 above. Which of these two ideas would seem hold my set temp better, be more efficient, and easier on the mini?
Would it be easier to try to make the fridge in idea #1 hold a constant 63-68* -OR- control a smaller amount of cold air removed from the fridge by a fan controlled by a thermostat as in idea #2?
Would either of these 2 ideas likely work in the winter with 55-62* basement temps? I guess I would be expecting it to kind of "heat" up to a point a few degrees higher than the ambient temp in my basement.
The second idea would be to basically build a "son of a fermentation chamber" and instead of using ice to do my cooling, I would direct cold air through a hole cut into the door of the mini and into my chamber with a small computer fan run by a thermostat which would only extract air from the mini when needed (just like it does with the ice system in a son of a fermentation chamber) and then returned to the mini through another duct/hole in the door, thus not taxing the mini as much as idea #1 above. Which of these two ideas would seem hold my set temp better, be more efficient, and easier on the mini?
Would it be easier to try to make the fridge in idea #1 hold a constant 63-68* -OR- control a smaller amount of cold air removed from the fridge by a fan controlled by a thermostat as in idea #2?
Would either of these 2 ideas likely work in the winter with 55-62* basement temps? I guess I would be expecting it to kind of "heat" up to a point a few degrees higher than the ambient temp in my basement.
