fermenting and serving out of same fridge

[bobeer]

Hey all... I just moved and the basement in my new house isn't as cold as the old one so I'm having to look into making some sort of fermentation area. Trying to keep costs low I have enough room to fit my 2 kegs, 5 lb c02 tank and a fermentor in my fridge. I brew mostly American ales so I'm looking at fermenting in the low 60's which puts my fridge temp in the mid to high 50's.
I know this is mainly personal preference for how cold/warm you like your beer served at but I assume mid 50's is a little too warm to serve at. What do you all think? Should I bite the bullet and get a mini fridge to ferment in?

Basically I have a budget and it's either a fermentation chamber or a nitro setup. I know controlling fermentation temps is more important than how you serve the beer because no nitro/tap setup will fix a warmly fermented beer. I'm just greedy and want the best of both worlds

Side note: I'd really only need to ferment in the fridge for a few days before I'd pull it out and let the yeast warm up to finish up. The basement is at 68.7 degrees on most days. I've never seen it over 69.3 or so.

 

[Homercidal]

If you can live with having your fridge too warm for the properly chilled beer, then you can make it work without buying another fridge.

Personally, I would buy a mini fridge or small chest freezer for fermenting off of Craigslist and put an STC-1000 on it and call it good. I just wouldn't have the patience to fiddle with adjusting the beer fridge all the time and putting up with warm beer after every brew.

 

[mikeasu]

Same dilemma with my keezer - I prefer 40° for serving my beer, but too cold for fermenting (nice for lagering though). So, if I've got a beer being served in the keg, and brew another, I'll disconnect the CO2 from the kegged beer, set temp for fermentation of the new beer, and suffer a week or two in "fermentation mode", leaving the kegged beer alone. I'd rather not, but don't think one temp cycle of my kegged beer will hurt things. Doing that now in fact - have a Dortmunder Export in a keg, Northern German Alt ending a 2 week primary this weekend. Temp set at 60° or 65°, but will keg the Alt Sat or sunday, drop temps back to 40°.

 

[grainbill]

I keg at room temp and store them at room temp, with the gas hooked up. That way I can use the fridge to ferment in between kegs. I brew two 10 gal batches each brew session and end up with two 5gal and 2 2.5 gal plus 4 racks. If I plan on brewing again soon, I hook the 2.5's up. And with having some bottled I can pretty mush brew anytime. Having two 6th barrels on goes pretty fast at our place....hic!

 

[SimonHucko]

snag some ferm wrap or a brew belt and wrap a blanket or two around your fermenter. you should be able to keep the fridge at serving temp and the wort at fermentation temps that way. an STC-1000-like controller will help keep you from overshooting temps.

 

[wardens355]

I vote a chest freezer with thermostat controller if it is agreeable to your pocketbook. I plan to have three chest freezers soon, so I am biased. One for serving, one for fermenting, and one that can serve/ferment/lager/age as I choose.

 

[bobeer]

I've been lurking on craigslist for a while and I'm not seeing any "CL specials" out there in my area. Everyone wants close to retail prices for the taller mini fridges. I might just have to make my fridge do double duty until something comes up I can pull the trigger on.
I wish I could utilized the top freezer part in my fridge to serve beer out of but it's not big enough to fit a keg in there. I put hops in there but that's it. Sort of a waste of cold storage.