The holy grail.

Well, it would seem there is quite some interest in my beer, especially how it tastes, some have been lucky enough to taste it.

Never thought i would be blogging but here goes. I am going to start off from this weekend with the conversion of my mums old 'under counter' fridge into a fermenting fridge and crash cooler. The fermenting side is to hold a steady 19 degrees Celsius so that yeast does its job in a safe environment, the crash cooling aspect is to help clear ale by getting it down to very low temps in an effort to drop out the yeast which is in suspension.

The fridge before

This is the fridge before deconstruction. Some people mount the controllers inside a box and connect a double gang socket to the box and then plug in the fridge and heat source, i prefer try and integrate it within the electrics of the fridge itself, using its own power supply for the heat source as well. Its a little more work but it looks much nicer and tidier. I am going to remove the light and thermostat for the power supply and control of the compressor.

Once the housing is removed it exposes the thermostat, live, negative, earth and switch live wires, we don't need the light so it can be cut out, also the controller i am installing will do the job of the thermostat so that can be removed as well.

I thought about reusing the housing in some way but to be honest it just takes up room inside the cabinet and i need to get a 30 litre fermenter in there.

That tube is a 45w tubular heater and needs to be wired up to the fridges mains supply and the controller.

There is the controller, better known as an STC 1000, it has many uses, people use them as aquarium temp controllers and also they are used in kitchens to control certain devices. I have decided to mount the STC 1000 in the top surface of the fridge.

 Measuring up.

Marking out and cutting the hole. Cant beat a dremmel for this job !

One rectangle hole ! Only a small amount of CFC released into the ozone as well !

Check it fits ok.

Time to wire up. The STC only switches on the live circuit so no need for a negative, live in one side of the heating switch and switch live for the compressor in other pole, next we attach the live of the tube heater to the STC switch on the heat side and the live of the fridge to the other pole, the tube heater needs to have negative connected and also earth, the little WAGO levered connectors are awesome and make the job really quick and easy. The STC also needs power from the live, as you can see with the WAGO connector i can split the live many times.

Here is a basic wiring diagram, i have not bothered to draw in the earth and negative to the compressor of the fridge as they are already in place at the compressor so all i needed was the white wire which is the switch live to complete the circuit of the switch to the cold side of the STC.The temp sensor are just thermo couple wires that dangle inside the fridge.

Fridge now plugs in and everything works, gotta say, it looks the dogs dangly bits. Tested it and the fridge can get down to nearly 0 degrees, ideal for fermenting lager, which incidentally, i will be doing soon.

Watch my blog for fourth coming brew days, i will be uploading my cokegolarator build shortly.