Fermentation Chamber

[rodwha]

Our good friend and patron, Skitter, has built a nice little fermentation chamber to maintain his temp when brewing in his 2 Mr Beer kegs.

It has me wondering about building something larger that can handle three 6 gal batches (buckets) at one time, and building an insulated chamber such as his and using an old water chiller (the type you have with the 5 gal water bottle on top) to maintain the temp.

I've kept it for a while thinking I could use it to maintain my swamp cooler water, but I'm thinking I could use a fan to blow across the condensing coils and cool the air instead.

I assume I'll need to figure something out with the thermostat though.

Has anyone done something like this?

 

[pennyloaf]

I would think the modification of a water chiller would be very hard - probably made for cooling a small amount of liquid - not air.

You can buy a large deep freezer and controller, probably all for about $400 or you can build a room, insulate it, and use a window AC with a controller... Might come out close in cost but more flexibility. Depends what you want.

Controller of choice seems to be a $20 sth-1000 (I think)


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[MaxStout]

Buy a used chest freezer on Craigslist and use an STC-1000 temp controller (under $20 on Amazon).

 

[k1ngl1ves]

Craigslist is your friend. Try to keep it simple...

 

[rodwha]

I wondered if it would be big enough to work, especially for a chamber large enough to handle 3 (or 4) fermentors. Initially my idea was to cool the water in the swamp cooler.

I was hoping to avoid further cost.

 

[rodwha]

Also, were I to be able to make it work, it would take up much less room.

I'm guessing a chamber as large as I have in mind would be very difficult to move around come moving day (we don't own a house yet).

 

[pennyloaf]

I got a deep freeze. Figured if I want to get out of brewing I still have a deep freeze. You can move it (when empty) and it fits 5-6 carboys.


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[MaxStout]

If you want to conserve space and get a freezer that just holds a certain number of fermenters, you can check out dimensions and specs of several models here.

 

[Transamguy77]

Just a thought, if you used a pump and circulated the cooled water through a heater core and put a fan blowing across the coils it would cool the air in the box, not sure how cold it would get but I would think it would keep it at Ale temps. That way you would be cooling a small portion of water and not a giant box.

 

[Setesh]

I wondered if it would be big enough to work, especially for a chamber large enough to handle 3 (or 4) fermentors..

I got my 17 cu ft freezer for 100 off CL. It will fit 3 fermentors very easily.

 

[dogwolf]

I got a 26cf glass door fridge for free put a ranco 2 stage controller for heat and cold used a seedling heat mat for heat