- Joined
- Apr 11, 2013
- Messages
- 376
- Reaction score
- 61
Hey everyone. I have just recently finished building a beer box as I call it, or as many would say trying to sound all fancy, a fermentation chamber. I wanted to create this little thread just to share my project with everyone, possibly give a few people some ideas, and to share my trials tribulations and afterthoughts.
Why a fermentation chamber. I happen to live in an area where the weather shifts roughly 60 to 80 degrees throughout the seasons of the year. I figure this is much like most of everyone else. Summers are consistently 100 degrees, and winters are consistently in the 40s. This makes it rough to be able to brew a beer and let it ferment out sitting happily between 65 to 72 degrees depending on what I may be doing. So a project blossomed in my head.
Building my beer box:
My intent was to build a container to fit 6 x 6 gal carboys, or bottled beer that is carbonating. Any assortment of the above.
I chose to use lumber as the structure material with spray insulation foam as a gap filler. The outside of the box is made of 1/2 in sandply, framed with 2x4 to make it quite sturdy, and once again 1/2 in sandply for the interior. I set the 2x4s longways for the framing requiring only 1 1/2 in gap to fill with the foam and setting the total wall width to 2 1/2 in.
A couple pics of the framing
The cooling:
Instead of going with the freezer box relying on a refrigeration system to do the cooling, and having to install a small heater to do the heating. I chose to go with a TEC peltier cooling device with aluminum heat sinks and fans. I can just feel a small amount of people cringe when they read that last line, but let me explain why.
First off I did not want to rely on compressors, freon, and the other junk that is involved with a standard freezer. Not that there would be any expected problems in the immediate, but when freezers break they usually “Break” rendering the entire cooler useless. Next is the simple fact that TEC devices can be used to both heat and cool a containers simply by reversing the polarity supplied to it. This eliminates an extra device from being installed in the freezer, or box. Last is scalability. You can easily size the heat sinks, and amount of TECs used relative to the size of the box to be cooled.
So the parts I used for the cooling and electrical:
Starting from the power source I used a Pyramid PSV300 power supply to get the 12 volts needed for the TEC and the fans. Important for this part is it needs to be a switching power supply because of the way I am going to be utilizing it.
I got a prebuilt TEC cooler from ebay which uses a 60 watt TEC with roughly 5 1/2 in aluminum heat sinks for about $35. I priced out the parts and this came at a great deal for what it is.
Two fans, either 80mm or 120mm would work well
One STC-1000 temperature controller, which is a great deal and provides all the function I need in a controller.
One single pull single throw relay using a 120v coil.
One double pull double throw relay also using a 120v coil.
One 12 port terminal strip
About 50 ft of black and 50 ft of white wire. Red would have been nice as well for the control wiring, but oh well on that one. I used solid wire, but stranded would have been nice specifically for the terminations to the temperature controller.
One 4s electrical box + cover plate
Two 1/2 in two screw connectors for cords and wire going into the 4s electrical box.
A handful of wire nuts.
A 1/2 in rigid nipple at 3 in for penetrating the wall of the box + two 1/2 in locknuts.
4 1/4 in width, 1 1/2 by 1 1/2 in L brackets to mount the power supply to the beer box. I had to bend the bracket about 1/4” in on one side to get a hold of the power supply.
A few pictures
First off let me just proceed this with, I actually am an electrician. So when it comes to the electrical side of things I did know what I was doing. If you feel uncomfortable with any of the electrical side of things it would be a good idea to get a buddy or someone who knows what to do to help ya out on this part. I would hate for ya to have a bad connection somewhere and potentially a fire. Not to make you scared, but you gotta respect the electrons.
Wiring Diagram
DBDT Relay Wiring
I hope the Wiring Diagram makes sense to you. I separated the colors of each type of wire to hopefully help you make sense of it. Black being the 120v hot, yellow the 120v neutral, blue being the 120v controlled side from the hot or cold from the temp controller, red is both the positive and negative 12v wires, and purple the controlled side from the Double Pull Double Throw relay to the TEC.
In order to bring 120v power into the 4s electrical box just cut the cord in half to the power supply. You will need to cut the cord anyway in order to get the circuit correct in switching the power supply from the temperature controller.
Use insulated butt splices in order to extend the leads from the 120mm fans and TEC device to the terminal strip.
At 2 and 1/2 in depth walls the back of the temperature controller almost comes out perfectly flush with the interior wall of the box, so you will need to wire this with leads first before mounting and installing. Also I would highly recommend checking for a complete working product before you use the mounting brackets to finish installing the temp controller as it was fairly difficult for me to get the brackets into place with the small holes I cut, and the brackets will catch the very first snap in slot at 1/2 depth.
Essentially what the DBDT relay does is switch the polarity to the TEC without causing a short on the 12v circuit.
What the SPST relay does is separate the 120v line between the heat and cool contacts on the temp controller. This makes it so the DBDT relay does not change state when either of the heat or cool contacts engage.
The only thing I think I could have done differently in this whole project is use 1 in foam board in between the 2x4 framing and the inner sandply. That would have created a bit of a better barrier from the elements.
Other than that I figure the cabinet should hold a 70 degree temperature when the weather is at 100 degrees. It may be running full time when that happens, but the cost of running the cabinet 24/7 is going to run less than a dollar a day. So I think its within my financial limitations.
The cool thing about the electrical side of this project is you can incorporate the design into any prebuilt cabinet you can find. Be it a big 5 sq ft cooler to the beer box that I built.
I hope you have enjoyed my rather lengthy description of the cabinet that I built. Its gonna keep my brewing going throughout the year and if you should endeavor in a project such as this I wish you the best of luck.
Why a fermentation chamber. I happen to live in an area where the weather shifts roughly 60 to 80 degrees throughout the seasons of the year. I figure this is much like most of everyone else. Summers are consistently 100 degrees, and winters are consistently in the 40s. This makes it rough to be able to brew a beer and let it ferment out sitting happily between 65 to 72 degrees depending on what I may be doing. So a project blossomed in my head.
Building my beer box:
My intent was to build a container to fit 6 x 6 gal carboys, or bottled beer that is carbonating. Any assortment of the above.
I chose to use lumber as the structure material with spray insulation foam as a gap filler. The outside of the box is made of 1/2 in sandply, framed with 2x4 to make it quite sturdy, and once again 1/2 in sandply for the interior. I set the 2x4s longways for the framing requiring only 1 1/2 in gap to fill with the foam and setting the total wall width to 2 1/2 in.
A couple pics of the framing
The cooling:
Instead of going with the freezer box relying on a refrigeration system to do the cooling, and having to install a small heater to do the heating. I chose to go with a TEC peltier cooling device with aluminum heat sinks and fans. I can just feel a small amount of people cringe when they read that last line, but let me explain why.
First off I did not want to rely on compressors, freon, and the other junk that is involved with a standard freezer. Not that there would be any expected problems in the immediate, but when freezers break they usually “Break” rendering the entire cooler useless. Next is the simple fact that TEC devices can be used to both heat and cool a containers simply by reversing the polarity supplied to it. This eliminates an extra device from being installed in the freezer, or box. Last is scalability. You can easily size the heat sinks, and amount of TECs used relative to the size of the box to be cooled.
So the parts I used for the cooling and electrical:
Starting from the power source I used a Pyramid PSV300 power supply to get the 12 volts needed for the TEC and the fans. Important for this part is it needs to be a switching power supply because of the way I am going to be utilizing it.
I got a prebuilt TEC cooler from ebay which uses a 60 watt TEC with roughly 5 1/2 in aluminum heat sinks for about $35. I priced out the parts and this came at a great deal for what it is.
Two fans, either 80mm or 120mm would work well
One STC-1000 temperature controller, which is a great deal and provides all the function I need in a controller.
One single pull single throw relay using a 120v coil.
One double pull double throw relay also using a 120v coil.
One 12 port terminal strip
About 50 ft of black and 50 ft of white wire. Red would have been nice as well for the control wiring, but oh well on that one. I used solid wire, but stranded would have been nice specifically for the terminations to the temperature controller.
One 4s electrical box + cover plate
Two 1/2 in two screw connectors for cords and wire going into the 4s electrical box.
A handful of wire nuts.
A 1/2 in rigid nipple at 3 in for penetrating the wall of the box + two 1/2 in locknuts.
4 1/4 in width, 1 1/2 by 1 1/2 in L brackets to mount the power supply to the beer box. I had to bend the bracket about 1/4” in on one side to get a hold of the power supply.
A few pictures
First off let me just proceed this with, I actually am an electrician. So when it comes to the electrical side of things I did know what I was doing. If you feel uncomfortable with any of the electrical side of things it would be a good idea to get a buddy or someone who knows what to do to help ya out on this part. I would hate for ya to have a bad connection somewhere and potentially a fire. Not to make you scared, but you gotta respect the electrons.
Wiring Diagram
DBDT Relay Wiring
I hope the Wiring Diagram makes sense to you. I separated the colors of each type of wire to hopefully help you make sense of it. Black being the 120v hot, yellow the 120v neutral, blue being the 120v controlled side from the hot or cold from the temp controller, red is both the positive and negative 12v wires, and purple the controlled side from the Double Pull Double Throw relay to the TEC.
In order to bring 120v power into the 4s electrical box just cut the cord in half to the power supply. You will need to cut the cord anyway in order to get the circuit correct in switching the power supply from the temperature controller.
Use insulated butt splices in order to extend the leads from the 120mm fans and TEC device to the terminal strip.
At 2 and 1/2 in depth walls the back of the temperature controller almost comes out perfectly flush with the interior wall of the box, so you will need to wire this with leads first before mounting and installing. Also I would highly recommend checking for a complete working product before you use the mounting brackets to finish installing the temp controller as it was fairly difficult for me to get the brackets into place with the small holes I cut, and the brackets will catch the very first snap in slot at 1/2 depth.
Essentially what the DBDT relay does is switch the polarity to the TEC without causing a short on the 12v circuit.
What the SPST relay does is separate the 120v line between the heat and cool contacts on the temp controller. This makes it so the DBDT relay does not change state when either of the heat or cool contacts engage.
The only thing I think I could have done differently in this whole project is use 1 in foam board in between the 2x4 framing and the inner sandply. That would have created a bit of a better barrier from the elements.
Other than that I figure the cabinet should hold a 70 degree temperature when the weather is at 100 degrees. It may be running full time when that happens, but the cost of running the cabinet 24/7 is going to run less than a dollar a day. So I think its within my financial limitations.
The cool thing about the electrical side of this project is you can incorporate the design into any prebuilt cabinet you can find. Be it a big 5 sq ft cooler to the beer box that I built.
I hope you have enjoyed my rather lengthy description of the cabinet that I built. Its gonna keep my brewing going throughout the year and if you should endeavor in a project such as this I wish you the best of luck.
By the way, a very active fermentation can generate another 6 watts or so just through yeast metabolizing sugar.
