Fermentation fridge size

[Bigcol49]

They seem pretty rigid to me; no give whatsoever.

Hi!
Then go with it!
We're a bunch of pessimistic codgers on this site!
I've just remembered why I didn't use my shelf supports - they were too narrow. The piece of timber that was slim enough to slide into the supports was too thin to bear then weight of a full FV.

 

[Fil]

fwiw ive read a LOT of brewfridge posts since contemplating and building my own almost a decade back.

And i have yet to read about any moulded shelf supports failing, ever..

avoid breaching the inner shell if you can, the foam insulation filling the void providing insulation behind the shell is an ideal habitat for nasties to thrive when exposed to atmospheric moisture such as that which condenses within a cold fridge, and impossible to clean/sanitise afterwards.. If you need to hack some shell bits off, fill with silicone or acrylic caulk/mastic and seal after to avoid problems down the rd. ..

 

[-Bezza-]

That looks like a pretty sweet setup you've now got. £35 is a snatch. I'm jealous!! I would invest in a tall fridge if I could work out how to get it home...

My current FV is sat on the glass shelf with the door held in place with ratchet straps. I forgot to make a wooden shelf before knocking up the beer. Oh well!!

 

[MartinHaworth]

I've had difficulties with brewing this winter, as I don't have a space with a stable temp. Most rooms with radiators have varied 8 - 20C. My local (very helpful and supportive) homebrew club (Norfolk), reckon the stressed yeast could be one of the reasons for the off flavours I'm getting.

So...Gumtree tall larder fridge £25. Inkbird 308 £30. Greenhouse heater £15.

Reading this thread has answered just about all of my questions, and I am making some wooden shelf inserts.

One question: the fridge thermostat. What setting should it be on?

THanks

Martin

 

[Oneflewover]

Not sure it matters too much until you want to use it for lagering

 

[Fil]

Turn the fridge stat to its lowest setting . that should give you a minimum temp of circa 4c perhaps lower .. but if you find you want to go lower than this limit allows you can look at bypassing the internal thermostat too.

 

[foxbat]

FYI "the lowest setting" is usually the highest number on the dial!

 

[Dmet]

Just picked up my fridge this weekend. Double height (about 5ft) fridge, just fitted in the car with the seats down for the princely sum of £3.00 off ebay. There is some rust inside at the very front and I am thinking of trying to rub it back and seal with paint just to make sure. I am looking now at a wooden shelf to hold the FV as I wouldn't want to trust the plastic side shelves. I have an STC-1000 but now thinking I should have gotten an Inkbird 308 as I still need to buy a few bits to make a functioning controller.

Would it be more efficient if I filled the unused air space with a cardboard box to reduce the space when not needed?

 

[MartinHaworth]

Got my Inkbird 308 and greenhouse heater in the post today. Selected some strong hardwood boards to cut to length for the shelving.

The only issue so far is that the bar heater wire will not fit down the (very narrow) drain hole. Question: Do I make a small cut in the corner of the door seal to route this?

Thanks

Martin

 

[Dmet]

I may have to do the same but I guess you can either pack it around or it will be small enough not to make a difference. Another option is to drill though the side and seal with mastic.

 

[MartinHaworth]

Cut the wood. Easy.

Sliced the seal to route cable. Easy.

Wired up inkbird. Easy.

Test ran overnight. Easy.

Alround very straightforward.

Two questions.

On the inkbird set menu, was unsure what heat/cool tolerance to set for. Advice?

Placement of temperature probe?

Thanks

Martin

 

[MarkBowie]

I may have to do the same but I guess you can either pack it around or it will be small enough not to make a difference. Another option is to drill though the side and seal with mastic.

If you’re going to drill you might as well drill the drain hole and widen it, just make sure you check for internal parts around the hole.

Someone else on the forum (can’t remember who to credit them) said that when drilling the side of fridge or freezer turn it on and put a bowl of hot water in it. The water will condense so you can see where pipes are.

 

[Thumper]

FYI "the lowest setting" is usually the highest number on the dial!

Took me years to work that out.

 

[Thumper]

If you’re going to drill you might as well drill the drain hole and widen it, just make sure you check for internal parts around the hole.

This is a good shout. Apparently drilling in any way that exposes the insulation is a bad idea, as the second any damp gets into the stuff it becomes a haven for bacteria and you just can't clean it. I'm told that it absolutely stinks.

 

[Fore]

Yeh, I worried about that comment after I had screwed the heater into the base. I guess the screw holes are so small and tight that it won't attract anything bad. But eye on it, and will seal it up hard if anything starts to smell.

More to do with lazyness than anything, I decided to be your guinea pig and just run with a wood plank on the molded shelf. I'm sure to report back if anything bad happens. So if you don't see me crying in the following posts, safe to assume all is OK... for now.

After setup I had 3 full fermenters waiting for cold crash, so it's been really well utilised so far. Not even actually fermented anything in it yet; heater not used. But I imagine the heater will be the most used part in the long run. Currently crashing my Westmalle tripel. My last Westmalle took over our entire kitchen fridge for a week long cold crash, so this is luxury.

I've been trying to get a handle on the control. I set a 0.5C cool and heat differential. As I have set the target temp to a cold crash 2C, all that matters right now is the cool differential. So I "think" the fridge switches on at 2.5C and turns off at 2C, but then overruns a bit to at least 1.6C, as I've seen. So I've seen it range from 1.6C to 2.4C. That seems quite a swing to me. I even think the heater would switch on if it hit 1.5C. So I've been wondering about reducing the cooling differential to say 0.3C. The theory being it would start to cool at 2.3C and wouldn't under-run as low as 1.6C. Anyway, just learning. More to figure out when I get to fermentation temps.

 

[MartinHaworth]

Thanks for this. I'm test running at presetn with hd and CD set to 2C. I'm seeing slow swings of 4C, similar to your experience.

If I recall correctly the factory default for these values is 3C each.

I guess that the smaller these values aree, the more frequent the power will cycle..

The key question is 'just how much of a swing will the yeasties cope with?

Cheers

Martin

 

[Dmet]

I will be working on my fridge at the weekend and will add some supports to the shelf just for a piece of mind to take some weight off the plastic sides.

 

[-Bezza-]

Thanks for this. I'm test running at presetn with hd and CD set to 2C. I'm seeing slow swings of 4C, similar to your experience.

If I recall correctly the factory default for these values is 3C each.

I guess that the smaller these values aree, the more frequent the power will cycle..

The key question is 'just how much of a swing will the yeasties cope with?

Cheers

Martin

I had some similar questions a few weeks back and got the answers thanks to others on the forum. :thumb:

What is your compressor delay set to? I got more consistent temperatures by upping the delay to several minutes.

Also, air changes temperature quicker than liquid and so if there's a load of headroom in the fridge and your probe is measuring air temp, you will see greater swings than the beer is experiencing. If the fridge is "full" of beer, the heat exchange between the FV and the air balances this out a considerable amount. But best practice might be to stick the probe to the side of the FV and cover it with a few layers of bubble wrap or a layer of polystyrene, so you're closer to measure the temperature of the actual beer.

 

[Fore]

I thought of one piece of advice. Don't cut the seal on the vertical side like I did, cut through the bottom horizontal instead, like Martin did. Why? Because the inner magnetic strip wants to fall out if you do it my way. I solved it by shoving some glue up, but not ideal. One advantage of my way though is I can see if the seal has not popped closed, and I can just tease it to seal. That's OCD no?

On crash cool, I'm finding the 0.3C cool differential better than the 0.5C I started with; the temp swing is a lot less. O.3C is the lowest possible actually, and I think I might have even gone as low as 0.2C if I could. There is no risk to the fridge compressor turning on too regularly, as the temp swing min to max is very long.

The trick with the differential is to reduce the range of the temp swing to as minimum as possible, while avoiding alternating between heater-on and fridge-on. A bit of trial and error depending on how well insulated your own system is.