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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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Contents:
  Re: Converting refrigerator with bottom freezer to fermentation chamber (Calvin Perilloux)


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Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:39:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Calvin Perilloux <calvinperilloux at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Converting refrigerator with bottom freezer to fermentation chamber

Using a frost-free, bottom-freezer unit shouldn't be any
problem at all.  Addressing your points:

>> 1. Being frost-free, i.e., self defrosting, I believe 
>> it cycles through a warming period every several hours. 
>> That is not desirable for a fermentation chamber. 

The most common refrigerator that homebrewers use is 
a frost-free unit, albeit one with the freezer on the 
top of it.  The principle is the same, though.  The coil- 
heating cycle (15 to 30 minutes) should not be long
enough to cause a temperature problem:  Firstly, the 
fan won't be blowing heated air into the fridge while 
the defrost heater does its job; secondly, the huge
thermal mass in 5 gallons of wort will overshadow any
slight temperature rise as the compressor is off.

>> 2. I'm guessing that there may be a significant 
>> temperature differential between the top and the 
>> bottom of the refrigerated compartment.

In a forced air system this is not so much of a problem.
In a convection system with no fan, it can be.  But the
thing that matters is the temperature of your beer, and
natural convection from the fermentation should even 
that out inside the fermenter, which is where it counts.
Again, homebrewers have not reported problems like this.
If you are really worried, perhaps you can use a thermowell 
and put the temperature probe in there, so you actually 
measure the beer temperature, which is anyway a more 
precise method than measuring air temperature outside
of the fermenter.

>> 3. The freezer on the bottom may not be useful for 
>> much of anything [...]

Generally not.  I suspect that it *might* be good for
storing non-thaw-sensitive things like hops, when you 
are holding lager temperatures in the refrigerator, but 
not ale temps, and certainly not if the outside ambient
temperature is anywhere close to your target fermentation
temperature (in which case the compressor will rarely run).
Even if you read freezing temperatures, you should perhaps 
check this by putting some ice cubes in a bowl in the 
freezer, and if they melt then that indicates that it might
be freezing sometimes but not always.

For what it's worth, I've used top-freezer refrigerators
as well as dedicated fridge-only units and converted
frost-free freezers for my fermentations.  All worked fine.
As for bottom-freezer units, I'd love to run an experiment
for you, but there is zero chance that SWMBO will let me 
do any such thing with the one in our kiitchen!  I think
my above comments are on target, though.

Calvin Perilloux
Middletown, Maryland, USA 


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