![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Improvised beer fridge
Apr. 13th, 2007 07:40 pmYou've probably heard about this if you've talked to me in the last week, it was a fun project.
The fridge was about 1/3 full of microbrew sixpacks, and when I saw this shiny little counter-height number at Costco, I couldn't resist.
It's a Sanyo SR-4433S, and Costco had it for $150. They have some similar models online, but none have the freezer compartment design this one has, which turned out to be important.
The optimum environment for storing beer and wine is about 50F, 70% humidity, dark, stable, and steady. As built, the fridge filled all these requirements except the first two. The built-in thermostat was set way too cold, and caused any moisture in the fridge to ice up in the freezer section, removing it from the air. Even on the lowest setting, it never got warmer than 40F. Great for keeping your milk fresh, but terrible for beer. I futzed with it for a few days until I broke down and disassembled the thing. It turned out to be easier than I thought.
See that coiled up thing in the front? That's the thermocouple for the thermostat. Originally, it ran under the cold plate and through the clips in the back, across the back of the plate. I removed it from the clips, routed it around the front of the cold plate, and coiled it under the coldest part of the plate.
The thermocouple originally ran under here. The channel under the cold plate is for a drip tray, useful when defrosting but kind of useless in such a warm fridge. Besides, the wine bottles don't fit with the drip tray in.
With the thermocouple confined, I could now lie to it.
I filled a 1 quart ziploc freezer bag with very salty water and placed it over the thermocouple. Salt water freezes at low temperatures, lower than even direct contact with the cold plate would generate, so the bag would stay close to the thermocouple and not do a bunch of freeze-thaw cycles that would affect temperature stability.
To help out humidity, and offer a buffer to the iced up condensation under the cold plate that builds up when the compressor kicks on, I filled the ice tray with water and put it on the annoyingly placed shelf in the bottom of the fridge.
(I had to put some no-skid stuff under it because the shelf is tilted forward for some reason.) It's not a real credo, but it helps stabilize things until I can get a hygrometer.
With the bag in place, I got another 7F out of it. 46F is as cold as it ever gets now. Not quite the magical 50F, but certainly a big improvement. I'm not sure what other easy tricks I can do to provide a colder environment for the thermocouple. I'm considering encasing it in the chilled water in the ziploc, but I can't quite get at how I would seal it up. The other option is to simply replace the thermostat, it's a very simple design that runs off 110V AC and has a thermocouple and a trigger line. That would cost money and engineering, however, when a little free science seems to have me 80% there.
It kicks on about 3 times a day, making it very cheap to run, and keeping temperature fluctuation within 2-3F. That, and the beer tastes great!
The fridge was about 1/3 full of microbrew sixpacks, and when I saw this shiny little counter-height number at Costco, I couldn't resist.
It's a Sanyo SR-4433S, and Costco had it for $150. They have some similar models online, but none have the freezer compartment design this one has, which turned out to be important.
The optimum environment for storing beer and wine is about 50F, 70% humidity, dark, stable, and steady. As built, the fridge filled all these requirements except the first two. The built-in thermostat was set way too cold, and caused any moisture in the fridge to ice up in the freezer section, removing it from the air. Even on the lowest setting, it never got warmer than 40F. Great for keeping your milk fresh, but terrible for beer. I futzed with it for a few days until I broke down and disassembled the thing. It turned out to be easier than I thought.
See that coiled up thing in the front? That's the thermocouple for the thermostat. Originally, it ran under the cold plate and through the clips in the back, across the back of the plate. I removed it from the clips, routed it around the front of the cold plate, and coiled it under the coldest part of the plate.
The thermocouple originally ran under here. The channel under the cold plate is for a drip tray, useful when defrosting but kind of useless in such a warm fridge. Besides, the wine bottles don't fit with the drip tray in.
With the thermocouple confined, I could now lie to it.
I filled a 1 quart ziploc freezer bag with very salty water and placed it over the thermocouple. Salt water freezes at low temperatures, lower than even direct contact with the cold plate would generate, so the bag would stay close to the thermocouple and not do a bunch of freeze-thaw cycles that would affect temperature stability.
To help out humidity, and offer a buffer to the iced up condensation under the cold plate that builds up when the compressor kicks on, I filled the ice tray with water and put it on the annoyingly placed shelf in the bottom of the fridge.
(I had to put some no-skid stuff under it because the shelf is tilted forward for some reason.) It's not a real credo, but it helps stabilize things until I can get a hygrometer.
With the bag in place, I got another 7F out of it. 46F is as cold as it ever gets now. Not quite the magical 50F, but certainly a big improvement. I'm not sure what other easy tricks I can do to provide a colder environment for the thermocouple. I'm considering encasing it in the chilled water in the ziploc, but I can't quite get at how I would seal it up. The other option is to simply replace the thermostat, it's a very simple design that runs off 110V AC and has a thermocouple and a trigger line. That would cost money and engineering, however, when a little free science seems to have me 80% there.
It kicks on about 3 times a day, making it very cheap to run, and keeping temperature fluctuation within 2-3F. That, and the beer tastes great!
