Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

Well, this post was suppose to show off the new chamber I built with a mini fridge, but it has ended in disaster:







I installed the door last night, and as I was installing the fan on the inside of the fridge. I wanted to move the coils in the mini fridge. Well... I moved them just a little bit too much and all of a sudden I hear a hissing sound.

Yup, I punctured the frion lines and the last two nights are down the drain... I went up stairs and sat on the couch and stared at the ceiling.

My new decision is to use the fridge I have in the garage to ferment and my cool chamber is gone..

To quote one of my mentors, "Every education has its price." Sorry to hear that your mini-fridge paid the price this time.

By the way, that's a great idea for a fermentation chamber. I wonder if you could do the same thing with thermo-electric coolers?

Did you get the idea from this?
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/p ... on-chamber

It does appear to work well when the fridge is OK. Very cool.

I didn't. However, that looks identical. My idea came from HBT:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/new-fer ... ld-102846/

It's a shame that I busted it as it was coming together great and was solid. I was pretty disappointed when it busted.

Just an FYI, if you have a fridge this size, for about $70 worth of parts you can build what I was going for. Stock up on extra silicone sealer.

My new plan: take the side-by-side fridge and remove the current shelving in there, build a shelf that will support two carboys, and build a ramp so I can wheel my sanke in.

Lee -

I suppose you could, the key to any project like this will be the ambient temperatures in the room. My brewery is in my basement where year round it will be 65-70 F. So to ask something to get you to 50 degrees isn't asking a lot as long as you use high R value insulation and do a great job of sealing the unit with silicone.

Martin

I got nothing else.