Wednesday 21 July 2010

Fermentation Fridge

Warning: This post contains no pics. I am assuming you know what a fridge looks like.

The Shepherds Flat Brewery has a Fisher & Paykel 520litre upside down fridge for fermentation control. For ages, I've been maintaining desired fermentation temperature ranges with a CraftBrewer TempMate, a 40Watt light globe in a couple of dogfood tins and the unmodified fridge.

One day it occurred to me that I could fit - as well as four fermenters in the fridge section - two fermenters in the downstairs freezer section. After a greater than usual (even for me) amount of *cough* basic research *cough*, I found that the fridge section is cooled by what amounts to a temperature-controlled 12Volt fan blowing cold air in from the freezer section. If I were to intercept this, I could then do exactly what the manufacturers do, but at temperature ranges that are of more interest to me. As long as the freezer section is colder than the fridge section, everything is okay. So, I can use the freezer section to ferment lagers (as if!) or to cold condition finished beer before packaging, and reduce the workload on my beer filter.

I had previously purchased a cheaper alternative to the TempMate from someone in Hong Kong via eBay and used it to control the keg fridge. Some rearranging and redeployment of various bits and pieces and I now have two controllers for my fermenting fridge. I dug up a 12VDC plug-pack from the bits box and made a connector to fit the fridge-resistant Molex connector used by F&P.

Right this instant, I am lagering an English Best Bitter in the freezer section and fermenting an English IPA and a Mixed Berry Mead in the top section. All seems to be working okay.

If I want to return the fridge to normal fermenting practice, I can plug the plug-pack and the fridge into the same controller and it works as it used to, or - in extreme circumstances - rework the fan connection to original.

Next step: build a 12V heating box to remove mains voltage from inside the cabinet.

Shepherds Flat Brewery

Part of why there hasn't been a post here in a very long time has been that I've moved house to a small farm-type property north of Hepburn. Here, I've rebuilt the building that was used to process olives and turned it into the Shepherds Flat Brewery.

Pics at a later date. More to follow.