Show us your fermentation chamber.

Fits a 6 gallon carboy perfectly !

 

HA!

 

Here it is getting a fill.



Now they are all bundled up and ready to go



Yes, I do need to give the inside a good cleaning.

I can actually fit 4 Better Bottles in there at a time.

 

I have one just like the first one in the OP, except a little wider, wide enough for two 5 gallon batches at once. One of them MUST be my 8 gallon bucket tho, as it's shorter, and fits on the hump (albeit with a rigged version of the standard airlock). Then I have another one that fits one ten gallon batch, which must be in my 14 gallon fermentation bucket. Obviously both have controllers. This makes it possible to have two ten gallon batches going at once, and one of them can have different yeast / dry hops etc because it's two five gallon buckets.

 

Vissani wine cooler, flexwatt for heating, controlled with STC-1000



Chest freezer with collar added, flexwatt added for heat, controlled with STC-1000

 

What size is that chest freezer? What about those carboys? I'm looking for something that can handle about that much at once.

 

I think it's just a 5.0cu ft. I've had it for awhile and just modified it to use for a fermentation chamber when I got an upright freezer. Those are 3 gal carboys with a split batch lambic. It does hold 6.5g carboys no problem as long as you build a collar. This one will hold (2) 6.5g carboys as long as I put a shelf in to make it flush with the hump.

 

Yes they are kept in the basement where it's relatively cold. The heating element rarely kicks on but it does sometimes. It also helps me dial in my fermentation temps very precisely and keeps from getting those up and down temperature swings or the fridge itself overshooting the cooling temp. I can usually keep my temps within .5 degrees Fahrenheit

 

In Germany, you can't buy carboys. The options are plastic buckets, which I find eventually always get infections, these things, which are called Gärballons, or "fermentation ballons." They come in various sizes, and I got the biggest available, 55 Liters, or 14.53 gallons. Having something this big is a plus, for I usually make batches ranging from 30 to 40 liters, or 7.9 to 10.5 gallons. Luckily, I found the BrewSmith program to easily scale the recipes up from 5 gallons. The Gärballon is used often here more for wine making, and I bought it at a site specifically dedicated to that, but I love it for beer brewing. I like this thing due to it's high mouth, which means I never need blow-off tubes or other things like that. Would you like something like this for your brewing?

Here's what they looked like straight out of the box, delivered directly to my door.


And with beer in them:

 

Currently, my huge chest freezer serves me as a keezer and doubles for fermentation control when I do lagers or can't find a suitable spot in the house for ales. Sort of a pain, because it means I have to change the temps on the beer in the kegs to accommodate the lager. But I have something like this available: http://homeappliances.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/compact-refrigerator.jpg

Any thoughts on converting this small refrigerator to a larger fermentation chamber, e.g., suitable for a 7 gal bucket? I'm thinking I could remove the door and build foam insulation walls around it to create a chamber, sort of like son of fermentation chiller, but powered by a fridge. There'd be the space behind the fridge for heat exhaust, i.e., it wouldn't be fully enclosed. Do you think I could keep enough heat out to maintain lager fermentation temps?

 

My self under the kitchen table.

 

I wouldn't chance it. That small fridge was designed to chill the space inside it. If you are going to put all that effort into it I would get a regular size dorm frig that your bucket would fit inside.

 

I have a fermentation cabinet in my unheated garage. It started out as a stock cabinet from Lowes, but I increased the depth by 6" or so. It is heated with a strip heater (center-top of picture, purchased from McMaster Carr) and controlled with a Johnson digital controller. A muffin-tin fan turns on with the heater to circulate the air. This time of year it works fantastic for lagers. Its also good for ales in fall and spring (and saisons in summer ). Right now I've got a vienna lager at 58 F. The cabinet is insulated with 3/4" styrofoam (added subsequent to this picture) and the shiny aluminized bubble wrap stuff (shown). Laimnate flooring serves as the the bottom. It easily holds two carboys. I believe the beer in the picture is a pilsner from several years ago. (Nice and clear, even in the primary, eh?)

The second picture shows a small-scale evaporative cooler that blows into the cabinet. If the humidity is low enough, this works OK, but in the summer I usually do the ghetto t-shirt and water-bath swamp cooler arrangement in my basement, which has a much lower ambient temperature that time of year.

 

My 12.2 gallon conical. I can do lagers in this baby in my 110F garage in the summer. Besides the $100 window AC I only spent about $30 on insulation and used leftover wood from other projects.

 

this looks EXACTLY like the dorm fridge I have, what modifications did you do to it? I need to go dig this out of storage, since better ferm temp control was one of my brewing goals for this year.

 

I'll have to take some of mine..

It's a big ass chest freezer, old and dented that I got for free. Hold like 4 carboys, and a boat load of beers that I hide from my wife to keep the fridge in the kitchen and the fridge in the upstairs loft cleared.

Mine is filthy compared to some of those new lookin set ups.