Chest freezer for fermenting multiple lagers

Systems, Gear, & DIY
1

I want to get into doing lagers. I want to be able to have more than one going at a time. I think I have a solution but I’m not sure how well it would work.

My idea is to get a chest freezer and hook it up to a temperature controller and wrap each carboy in a heater with their own temperature controllers.

The chest freezer would have to be set at lagering temp just above freezing. Doing it this way would allow me to have carboys at different stages of the process. I could have one fermenting with the heater set to the low 50s and another one lagering much colder.

I’m not sure how energy efficient it would be, but it sounds logical to me that it should work.

Has anyone done anything similar? Pros? Cons? Would the 20 degree difference between the freezer temp and the fermentation temp be too much? I’m not even sure this will work. Just spit-balling.

Are there any other good ideas for lagering multiple batches at once?

2

Those heat wraps might struggle with a 20 degree lower ambient.  I’d wrap insulation around the outside of the heat wrap.  I ferment lagers in my garage in the winter with the heat wrap and insulation.  The water in the dog’s bowl would freeze, but the beer hangs in there at 50 F.

3

I think the space is too small to properly maintain two temps using heaters and the freezer. The freezer is going to be fighting the heaters constantly.  I can see what your thinking working well in a large walk-in, but a freezer is iffy.

I lager in my kegerator. That way it can sit for weeks out of the way. I keep my kegerator at 40, but I’m fine with it.