The ability to drop temperature is important for fermentation, but it’s also important to cold condition and store, or chill the brew to the optimal temperature before drinking.
While the standard fridges and freezers are useful, they take up too much space, use too much electricity and happen to be expensive.
Thus, I found a few fermenting chambers and mini-fridges which are ideal for homebrewers who need a cold, controlled place for storing their brews.
1. Cool Brewing Fermentation Chamber
If you are looking for something inexpensive, versatile, and easy to manipulate which doesn’t require electricity, the Cool Brewing fermentation chamber is the right pick for you.
This chamber is thermally insulated so it can keep the temperature even during the primary fermentation process. If you know how important is the even temperature during primary fermentation, then you’ll know this feature is already worth the price.
What I like about these types of fermentation chambers is their simplicity as they won’t cost you a penny after you get them, well besides some ice of course.
You can fit up to 8-gallon fermenters with an attached airlock on top, so I believe this will fit 99% of homebrewers’ needs.
This insulated fermenting chamber can be used for fermenting purposes but you can also store bottles for cold conditioning later, so this chamber is useful even after fermentation ends.
How do they work?
Simplicity at its best allows for a low price and great functionality.
Simply throw in some ice bags or frozen water in plastic bottles to drop the temperature as the insulation material will take care of the rest.
2 frozen, 2-liter bottles will drop the temperature to 10°F degrees below the ambient temperature, 3 frozen, 2-liter bottles will drop it by 15°F and you can scale this all way to 30°F.
Set them up and put them in the closet until the primary fermentation or bottle conditioning is done.
If only brewers in the past had this technology, they could have brewed any brew at any place.
Ivation Mini-fridge for bottles
Sometimes you don’t need to fit a whole fermenter in but have a collection of fine homebrew such as meads, wines, or heavy beers you keep for a special occasion.
Mini-fridges are ideal for this purpose as they only take up a fraction of space and can fit everywhere.
Ivation Mini-Fridge looks like a fancy part of the furniture, holds the temperature stable at 41º – 64ºF which is a perfect storage temperature for any homebrew, and can fit 18 750ml wine bottles.
While other fridges not made for storing of brews have fluorescent lights which can light strike hops or interfere with yeast, the LED lights illuminate your collection safely, and you can easily control the temperature displayed on the screen to chill your favorite brew with the right timing.
Ivation Mini-Fridge is also silent and doesn’t disturb yeast which is a big plus.
These Mini-Fridges are an excellent choice for your special collection of brews you are proud of, but you can also put them in any bottle you plan to drink soon as it’s so easy to achieve the desired temperature with it.
As you know, every brew whether it’s wine, mead, beer, champagne, or cider has the optimal temperature at which it should be served, and having the option to nail it accurately will impact the quality of the drinking experience.
FOVOMI 20″ Cooler Fridge
This is an absolute unit of a fridge as the manufacturer made enough space for it to fit 122 liters ( 52, 750 ml wine bottles) while it’s still super compact at 33.66-inch height and around 20-inch width.
I am amazed at how they built this thing because it’s so optimized for homebrewers and wine
collectors needs.
Not only that you can fit your whole collection of bottles in even if you are brewing 5+ gallon batches and it can easily fit any kind of bottle from beer bottles to wine bottles, but the shelves can be removed which opens more room for larger bottles or an 8-gallon fermenter.
The coolest feature and something you don’t usually see in fridges is the ability to set up a different temperature in two halves of the fridge.
Store your favorite red wine or mead at 68°F, and your favorite beer at 50°F at the same time. Just imagine how useful this is if you brew different brews which should be stored or served at different temperatures, now you no longer need a separate fridge.
Beautiful design, super-low noise levels, brew-friendly LED lights, and easy-to-navigate smart touch control will make it easy to operate this superb mini-fridge and make you always achieve your desired temperature at right time.
What to look for in chambers and fridges for home brewing?
Space
When I just started out with my homebrewing adventure I had no idea how much space I’ll need to fit ingredients, finished bottles, and fermenters.
I started out with just 40 glass bottles, a single 5-gallon plastic fermenter, and other necessary brewing equipment but I soon after bought 2 more fermenters so I could simultaneously brew different brews which also tripled my bottle capacity.
I didn’t expect that I’ll run into such problems, so I had to store bottles in my friend’s and family’s fridges.
The problem with many fridges is they are not made for brews only but rather for a combination of food and drink storage.
So, try to find a design that is bottle-friendly as you’ll need a whole place just for bottles and perhaps some leftover ingredients that can fit over the bottles.
The chambers and fridges on the list are an excellent choice, just be aware that you filter out most sediment prior to bottling if you plan to put beer bottles at the side as it could cause the sediment to blend back into the beer once you move them.
Fortunately, the above fridges and chambers can fit standing and side-lying bottles.
Size
If you live in a small apartment you can’t stack multiple standard fridges unless you want to feel like a trapped rat.
Thus, these fermentation chambers can even fit in closets and you can place mini-fridges by your bed, somewhere in the corner, or even on a balcony.
Noise levels
Many big refrigerators can create noise above 50 dB which is noticeable and annoying if you also have to spend time in the room where it’s installed.
For that reason, I chose to put the fridges on this list with noise levels between 41 to 43 dB which is the noise you’d expect to find in a library.