Opening up freezer shelf in mini-fridge

if what you are describing is what I think you have... maybe.

the freezer of these mini fridges is just a small compartment. the bottom and both sides of the freezer compartment are the coils, and the coils keep the fridge cold, above 32. the small box is below 32.

you can carefully unscrew the coils from the roof of the fridge and carefully (very carefully) bend the coils (that is to say the shelf) to the back of the fridge. the unit will work very well as a fridge, but you will of course not have any freezer section. you now have a larger refrigerator.

your thermostat will possibly not cooperate. expect an air temp variation of 8 to 11 degrees. not too bad, but enough to make you want an outboard controller.

don't put anything directly up against the cold coils including the carboy. the airlock wont freeze. add some vodka if you are worried. voila, you have a fermentation chamber.
Cheers.

 

If you can remove the flap via removing some screws, start there. Throw some thermal mass (case of cheap beer) in there to help the fridge go through normal cycles and see what happens. Take some temps off the beers immediately after you pour them. I've never tried removing the flap, but from what I've seen of about 6 mini fridges they tend to have defrost issues. I don't think this would be a problem over the course of a few weeks at 55F+ and an external thermometer.

 

Oh, man! I wish my fridge had a basement!

 

I'll risk a "maybe not". Some mini fridges have the evaporative coil in the freezer shelf. If you get active build up of frost/ice on your freezer shelf this is the case and of course it can not be removed.

Another consideration/work-around. Many (most?) 6.5 gallon primary buckets will fit in a run-of-the-mill mini fridge except the shelves in the door interfere. In my case I took a sawzall and "removed" the shelves. It's hardly a thing of beauty, but works just fine. Install a temp controller and you are all set.

 

My bucket just fits, but my carboy is about 1/2" too tall with airlock. So I let Mr. Hacksaw whack off the top of the airlock and it works just fine. A blow off tube can be made to work also.

Another work-around I did before "whacking" my shelves was to put the base of the bucket on the hump and use a shorter spacer block in the front. This allowed the bucket to fit with a tilt just enough for the airlock to go in front of the freezer shelf (between shelf and door). It was a minor PITA to get it set just right, but worked pretty good.

Fabrication seems to be a part of homebrewing for me.