Dual compartment Fridge

[Westco]

So I have been thinking about typical brewer's problems when it comes to keeping the peace between you and your significant other. It seems that many guys run into the problem of having a Temp control fridge for fermenting and then yet another for kegging( don't forget about the one you use for food in your kitchen). I was thinking how cool it would be to have a dual compartment chest fridge. One with 2 power cables so you can control the temp on both sides, one for fermenting and the other for beer dispensing. I tired searching on the web but cannon't find anything like this. if there is nothing like this how easy would it be to split a chest fridge into two parts and be able to control the temps on both sides independently?

[Henning1966]

Check out mylos build this sounds alot like what you are looking for. http://www.wortomatic.com/articles/The- ... n-Chillers

[beltbuckle]

You're going to have a hard time with a chest freezer since they only have one compressor and the refrigerant coils are more or less spread uniformly around the whole chest. You could of course split it into two compartments and heat one side, but that isn't very efficient. A side-by-side fridge could do what you want much easier with a little modification.

[Westco]

wow that looks really cool, its a bit above my skill lvl and by a bit I mean ALOT!

[Sent From My iPhone]

I can ferment lagers in my fridge or chest freezer/kegerator with one of these setups:

Also works great when you want to jack the temp of a Belgian up a bit.

[Westco]

I have a two stage ranco temp controller and also a ferm wrap coming in the mail. I did not think that if I am serving beers at 45º that it would be able to heat up the carboy to 67 which is where I like to ferment my ales. Lager would be easy but I only do them about every other batch.

[mRandolph]

I recall seeing someone use a side by side fridge/freezer and punch a hole in the wall between the two, running a series of 12V fans on a dual controller, similar to the idea from Wort-o-matic referenced above. If I recall correctly, this is similar to the mechanism by which those types of fridge units run on their own, this just made the process more easily controllable. If I find the link I'll post, and YMMV.

In my own house, we use the keg chest freezer as a counter in our kitchen (I made a removable wooden top with huge magnets on that I take off when I get in the freezer). As for fermenting ales, I do it out back in a water bath with an aquarium pump. Seems to work alright, though the sun will overheat the containers at times (I use two rubbermaid containers stacked, to protect the beer from skunking). A little off topic, sorry.