West Coast Brewer Home Brewing Blog

Fermentation Freezer – Refrigerator

A fermentation freezer or fermentation refrigerator is a freezer or refrigerator that has been converted to a temperature controlled fermentation chamber. Controlling the fermentation temperature of your beer is one of the best ways of improving the quality and taste of your beer. A fermenting beer generates a great deal of heat, and if you live in an area where room temperature reaches 75° F or more, you can have a very difficult time keeping your fermenting beer at an optimal temperature.

 

If a fermenting beer reaches too high of a temperature you can get some nasty off flavors and potentially kill your yeast. I live in Southern California and when I first starting out in home brewing, I had to try all the tricks to keep my beer cool; I placed my carboys in a plastic tub filled with water, I covered the carboys in wet towels and had a fan blowing on them, but no matter how much effort I put forth, I could not regulate my fermentation temperature nearly as well as my fermentation freezer does.

 

Setting up a fermentation freezer or refrigerator is easy and can be inexpensive as well. I purchased mine when Lowes was having a 20% off appliance sale for around $400, but other people I know have gotten amazing deals on Craigslist for as low as $75. All you need besides a freezer or refrigerator is a temperature control unit like a Johnson Controls Digital Thermostat which you can find here.

 

The freezer that I use is a Frigidaire 14.8 cu ft LFFN15M5HWF, which works great for my needs. It fits two large 6.5 gallon carboys, 4 pin lock conversion 5 gallon kegs that I use for secondary, and about twenty bottles of beer (a.k.a. my emergency stash). I use a Johnson Controls Digital thermostat to maintain the temperature. Best of all, since I use pin lock conversion 5 gallon kegs, which are shorter then ball lock kegs, I did not need to build a collar onto the freezer for additional height. The only complaint that I have is that on occasion I get more humidity then I would like. To combat that, I periodically wipe the inside of the freezer down with a dry towel to remove any moisture and also use a product called DampRid, which helps absorb the remaining moisture.

 

Image of the chest freezer that I use for my fermentation chamber:

Fermentation Freezer for Home Brewing Beer

Fermentation Freezer for Home Brewing Beer

3 Comments

  1. Home_Brewing

    That is a tightly packed fermentation freezer and it looks like you have some good beer in the pipeline. That is also quite a nice bottled beer stock pile that you have going there!

    Home_Brewer

  2. Chris

    How do you set the freezer to only cool and not freeze. Was not aware that a freezer could ne set to not freeze.

    • Joe

      Hello Chris, sorry for the late reply. I use a temperature controller to keep the freezer from freezing. It is basically a power bypass with a temperature probe that sits in the freezer. You set the temperature threshold that you want (say 68F), once the controller registers the desired temperature it shuts off power to the freezer. The only downside that I am aware of using a chest freezer is that sometimes I get condensation buildup. I use a product called Damprid to deal with that. Hope this helps clear things out.

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