Recurring mold in ferm chamber

[FatDragon]

I bought a chest freezer for fermentation about a year ago, and for most of that time it's had the nasty habit of developing mold on the inside with fair regularity. The mold often spreads to the surface of my fermenters as well. I'm using plastic jerry cans with HDPE liners because the cans had a nasty plastic smell when I bought them. The liners stick out from all sides of the cap and sometimes that part gets some mold on it as well. It has persisted through multiple bleach cleanings with bleach solutions up to the 20:1 range. Notably, the chamber collects a lot of moisture on the inside as a result of the high humidity where I live.

For that reason, I'm finally moving on a plan I made quite a while ago to put a small dehumidifier in the chamber in hopes that it will mitigate some of the problem. Once the dehumidifier arrives in a couple days, my plan is to attack the chamber first with a towel to soak up as much moisture as I can, then a spray bottle of pure bleach and a stack of paper towels to kill any mold and spores that might be in there. I might also start giving my fermenters a dilute bleach wipedown on the surface before filling them in the future to prevent the possible vector for a new mold infection if I manage to kill it this time.

I guess I have two questions here:

First - Is this a common issue in fermentation chambers? If not, why is it for me?

Second - Does my plan of attack sound like a winner, or am I missing something? I'd like to nip this in the bud now because I've already lost one of my relatively hard-to-come-by batches of beer to an infection in this chamber and I'd rather not have that happen again.

 

[LittleRiver]

Mold is a common issue in any warm damp location, so you're not the only one who has faced this issue.

Keep in mind that you don't kill mold to make it go away. It's everywhere, it's in the air, it will take hold wherever it finds environmental conditions that it likes. It is good that you clean away the mold you can see, but it will come back unless you change the environmental conditions.

You are on the right track with a dehumidifier. Use it for sure. Use two if that's what it takes.

Fermentation gases contain moisture, so you want to vent those outside the chamber. Instead of using an airlock inside the chamber, run a blow-off hose outside the chamber into a jar of sanitizer solution.

Those two steps should make a considerable difference for you, and possibly solve your problem.

 

[FatDragon]

I'll have to see if a blow-off out of the chamber is feasible next time I brew. In the meantime, I'll try the dehumidifier as soon as it arrives.