Hey all,

When moving in with my girlfriend to a larger apartment, I secured permission from SWMBO to get a chest freezer for fermentation. She then changed her mind, saying that no matter where I put it, it would be an eyesore. I convinced her that I could do something to make it look better and not as much like an appliance.

Anyone have any ideas as to what I could do to make it look nicer? Any and all ideas are appreciated.

New girlfriend...

Sounds like more of an issue than appearance. That being said I don't think you can wrap it in anything without affecting cooling performance. Best solution would be to put it behind a wall. Good luck!

No she's been around for a while. I just don't think she thought about it very hard. She's a big fan of the beers themselves. In fact, I'm currently upgrading to a 10 gallon system (with her blessing) to keep supply up with increased demand. But my current fermentation fridge only fits a single carboy, and that won't do the job. It really is just about the appearance. If we had a garage with electrical outlets it would be a non-issue. But we have a 2 bedroom apartment in NYC, which limits our space just a bit. I just have to make our living room or our guest room not look like poop.

I was kidding, anyway. Kinda
Maybe put some fabric around it or something like that to dress it up. Just using it for ferment chamber, right? Is the garage connected to the apartment. You may need to invest in a nice long extension cord and drill a hole in a wall/ floor, whatever. Is it a 7.2 or what?
Sounds like a rock and a hard place.

You could always build a 'cover' from wood that would cover the front and sides, leaving the back open so that the chest freezer could be used as a table as well, then you'd just need to pull the 'cover' forward when you need to get at the beer.

This idea.

Do the sides of a freezer need to be allowed contact to open air or just the back?

Even if the sides need to not be solidly blocked, you could do cut outs on the sides and use cloth in them sorta like a set of speakers.

Something like this:

It's the GE 14.8 (model #FCM15PUWW) from Home Depot. Already staked it out. Can Hold 2 6.5 gallon carboys for fermenting and 4 cornies (6 if I build a collar). It has a 48x30 footprint.

Ideally it's going to have 10 gallons fermenting at a time, and 10-20 gallons lagering/conditioning. I'm probably going to use the left side shelf to store bottled homebrew for competition so I can get it out of the house fridge.





Homebrewtalk has a good set of pictures on corny footprints, but I don't think there is a lot of good info on fermentation chambers out there.