I currently have a chest freezer that I use for fermentation temperature control as well as for storing and serving kegs. Given the temperature differential of these two activities, I cannot do both of these things at the same time. Despite kegging most of my beers, I do still bottle on occasion, and lack cold bottle storage space.
Given my predicament, I am interested in finding an ideal garage refrigerator to store my beer bottles and, on rare occasions, serve as a backup fermentation fridge. i could see myself getting perhaps a deli fridge or other vertical fridge of sorts with removable shelves (to accommodate a 6.5 gal carboy). live in Southern California and it gets quite hot in my garage during the summer (100F+), so whatever I get has to be ‘garage safe’ in order to accommodate these temperatures.
Do any of yall know of any good refrigerator models that could fit these requirements? Thanks!
Ensure you get a ‘garage ready’ fridge or install a ‘garage kit’ to one not garage ready. The environment can cause refrigerators to struggle so mfrs have developed these kits to help. You’ll want to ensure you can get a kit for the make/model of the refrigerator if it is not ‘garage ready’ before buying it.
Depending on budget, a newer purpose built unit will most likely be more efficient than an older retrofitted unit. …but they can get expensive.
In a hot garage your fridge has to work overtime to try to keep things cool, and after running up your electricity bill it’s likely going to break down! - Garage ready refrigerators typically come with better insulation to handle wide temperature swings, and use different thermostat and compressor designs as well.
And there you go. I learned something on this one. I did not know there was a difference in fridges based on where they would be kept or used. That is a great piece of info to have. Thank you. RR