Beer Forum

I just finished putting a 6 inch collar on a 3.3 cubic foot Sanyo mini fridge. I can now fit 7 gallon buckets and 6 gallon Better Bottles/carboys in there. It has a few quircks but, it sealed up pretty nicely. I opted for poplar over pine as I figured a denser wood would have more insulation value. I am going to mount a small PC fan to push air through the little freezer area when the temp controller kicks on. I just ordered 2 digital Ranco's (found a company that sells them for $46.00 new) so I will christen it next week. My birthday is this Thursday and my wife has been dropping hints about buying me a kegerator or chest freezer. She even made me show her which chest freezer would work the best when we are at Home Depot yesterday. I am sure half her motivation for the gift is to get the corney keg out of the kitchen fridge. Good week in the beer world for me.

I have been bending and working more than I should with my recent surgery so I was too lazy to take pictures of the build. I will take some when I get my Ranco and post them here.

One question though, and I know there is lots of debate, what is the best place for mounting the temperature sensor? It seems to me that taped to the side of the carboy under a little insulation would work best.

I usually just tape it to the side of my fermenter under a couple of folded up paper towels.

beerocracy wrote:I usually just tape it to the side of my fermenter under a couple of folded up paper towels.

I was thinking the same thing except I have this foam tape I nabbed from the hospital. The stuff is pretty bad ass. I was also thinking of inserting a thermowell stopper in my carboy but then I thought that would leave the outside of my beer cooler than the inside. I think the thermowell stopper is best suited for heating applications, not heating or heating/cooling.

JZ did the experiment. Glass is a pretty good heat conductor. He said that a probe taped to the outside is nearly identical to the thermowell. If you are hell bent on the thermowell, then also don't worry about there being much difference between the "inside" and the "outside" of the beer. Beer (well, water) is also a good conductor of heat and has a lot of thermal mass. Vi-ger-ous fermentation keeps things swirling about and very well mixed, too.


Mylo