BiteSize
Active Member
I've been brewing for about three and a half years now, and up until this point, I have fermented my beers at ambient temperatures. Much of the time, this meant cranking the household AC in the summer time (much to the chagrin of SWMBO) and blasting heat in the winter time (much to my chagrin). I brewed one lager last year while we lived in an A-Frame cabin that had a 3/4's finished basement. I used by keezer that was empty at the time as my lagering chamber. It was a Maibock that turned out excellent and left me wanting to brew more lagers. So all of this has led me to finally pull the trigger on building my fermentation chamber, but above all, I want to continue pushing the quality of my brewing to higher levels.
Here is the end result... read on for a detailed description of the build. Hope you enjoy!
When designing my chamber, some of my major desires were such that the chamber was able to:
I have very limited skills with SketchUp so I went old-school and drew up my plans by hand. Took me a while to work out the details, but provided a good starting point to rough calculations for material needs and estimated costs.
Made the trip to Menard's to get most of the supplies for the build. I'm planing out controlling each chamber with STC-1000 project boxes. The components for those I sourced online.
We made all the lumber cuts first for the build of the chamber frame/skeleton.
I will be adding these air grille returns to provide ventilation/cooling for each of the fridge units. They started out as white, but I painted the with stainless colored spray paint. I picked up one of the fridges from CL for 20$, and the other is one that I have had in the shed for the past two years. Luckily, both are Emerson Electric and have the same widths and depths.
Here is the end result... read on for a detailed description of the build. Hope you enjoy!
When designing my chamber, some of my major desires were such that the chamber was able to:
- Ferment both lagers and ales simultaneously
- Have two chambers controlled independently
- Heat and cool each chamber
- Hold two carboys in each chamber
- Have room to hold kegs as they condition
- Be moveable since we currently rent and are likely to move within the next year and a half.
- Be finished with an attractive look up to SWMBO's standards for being a household item.
- I'm sure there are more, but you get the point.
I have very limited skills with SketchUp so I went old-school and drew up my plans by hand. Took me a while to work out the details, but provided a good starting point to rough calculations for material needs and estimated costs.
Made the trip to Menard's to get most of the supplies for the build. I'm planing out controlling each chamber with STC-1000 project boxes. The components for those I sourced online.
We made all the lumber cuts first for the build of the chamber frame/skeleton.
I will be adding these air grille returns to provide ventilation/cooling for each of the fridge units. They started out as white, but I painted the with stainless colored spray paint. I picked up one of the fridges from CL for 20$, and the other is one that I have had in the shed for the past two years. Luckily, both are Emerson Electric and have the same widths and depths.