Hi all!
I have a crappy commercial merchandizing cooler that I'm using as a ferm chamber. It works great for fermentation temperatures, but I cold crashed a beer in it for the first time this week, and the evap coils iced up... not terribly but I definitely got about 8oz of water in the pan when I finally let it thaw. I'm worried that this will cause problems later when I want to lager.
To minimize icing, do you think it's better to have the probe on or off of the fermenter when dropping to low temps? I took the probe off of the fermenter when I dropped the temperature because I didn't want to run the compressor too hard. This led to the fridge cycling very frequently for short cycles, and I got to thinking that maybe these frequent temperature swings were at least partly responsible for the fridge icing. Also I have the temperature differential set at 5 degrees F. Should I make that smaller?
Thanks for your advice, refrigeration gurus!
I have a crappy commercial merchandizing cooler that I'm using as a ferm chamber. It works great for fermentation temperatures, but I cold crashed a beer in it for the first time this week, and the evap coils iced up... not terribly but I definitely got about 8oz of water in the pan when I finally let it thaw. I'm worried that this will cause problems later when I want to lager.
To minimize icing, do you think it's better to have the probe on or off of the fermenter when dropping to low temps? I took the probe off of the fermenter when I dropped the temperature because I didn't want to run the compressor too hard. This led to the fridge cycling very frequently for short cycles, and I got to thinking that maybe these frequent temperature swings were at least partly responsible for the fridge icing. Also I have the temperature differential set at 5 degrees F. Should I make that smaller?
Thanks for your advice, refrigeration gurus!