Bought me a nice wine fridge…

sudsandswine said:
I am planning to use the wine cooler’s temperature control since it can hold temps in the suitable range for curing. So I’ll only need humidity control. Inkbird has something for that too. Thanks for the tip on the fan. I’ll look into how often it runs.
Click to expand...

How constant do the temps/humidity need to stay? Wine coolers are popular for cigar storage since they can keep temps in a safe zone, but most people stay away from the compressor driven fridges as they tend to really jack with the humidity. I used a thermoelectric wine fridge in the past for mine, since it didn't cause the swings as much.
 
I hooked my Flameboss up and monitored the temp of the fridge overnight. I have the probe clipped to a wire rack in the center of the chamber and set the temp to 53*. The temp range is very consistently 47-56*, the temp drops quickly when the compressor kicks on and then it gradually rises. It looks to spend the majority of time between 50 and 55 degrees.

I guess I need to figure out if the swing is within acceptable limits. Using an external temp controller to cycle the power off and on might be able to hold it in a tighter range but it would probably cause the compressor to kick on and off more often. I plan to order the humidifier and temp/humidity controller this weekend. I am going to try using a raspberry pi to log temp and humidity over time and then make a graph out of the results. Reading the reviews on some of the “Bluetooth” or “smartphone” based options on Amazon seem to require overly allowing permissions on your device running the app and I want to keep it all local.



Green line is the Flameboss trying to send power to the fan, red line is fridge temp.
 
Put some beverages or jugs of water in it to approximate the meat weight when in real use. Having stuff inside at the median-target temperature should keep the temp swing much more even. Just air doesn't hold heat well.
 
Increased thermal mass might increase wavelength but I doubt it’ll have much an effect on amplitude (low and high temp marks) since that appears to be determined by the fridge’s controller. That graph looks like the compressor is kicking on all the time but each square on the graph represents ~4 hours or so.
 
My deep freezer had same swings. Calculate average and adjust settings and when cooler will kick on. I think I set my temp 1f higher than needed and had it kick on at 1f over set limit. And turn off at designated temp. As you said compressor would carry temp down past about 3f and slowly rise back. I maintained about 5f swing and worked great

You will need to do same with humidty


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Minor progress - I got a Bluetooth environmental monitor to keep tabs on temp and humidity inside the chamber. I found a sensor that doesn't require sending data to "the cloud" or intrusive permissions on the mobile device...bonus, made in USA? There is an app that connects via Bluetooth so I can't check on things when I'm away, but I don't really care about that as long as the data is there when I get back. Long term I may try to use a Raspberry Pi + THUM sensor to create a monitor I can access locally in a web browser but for now this will work. Something I also noticed is the temperature swings using the refrigerator's controller are much tighter than my Flameboss lead me to believe, the fridge is set at 53* and the 24 hour rolling average is 53.2*. Both the BT THUM sensor and the Inkbird corroborated this. There's also an option to export the sensor data to .CSV which I like.



Something TravelingJ pointed out about compressor driven fridges' impact on humidity levels was quite obvious in this graph. The compressor kicks on and the RH% quickly drops to what I assume is close to ambient RH% in my house. Compressor shuts off and RH rises. Even though the swings are fairly significant, over a 24 hour period the average is about what I was expecting to see. A cool cellar on a Mediterranean coast probably doesn't have these swings but whatever.



The sensor was smaller than I expected, a little double sided tape and it stuck to the side of the fridge no problem.

I got a relatively small humidifier (beer for proportion and refreshment). With the smaller overall size comes a smaller water reservoir, but based on what I've seen from the THUM sensor I don't think it'll take much.



I'm going to see if I can moderate the bigger drops in RH% by kicking on the humidifier for a brief moment without causing a bigger spike on the upside using this Inkbird temp/humidity controller. My buddy that has some experience in this area suggested I consider using an Auber controller instead but I'll give this a whirl for now. The good news is that the Bluetooth sensor and the Inkbird are reporting pretty close to the same values.



I'll probably tinker with it for a week or so before I think about adding any meat to it...which will probably skew the RH% a little bit, so I want to make sure it's dialed in and I understand how to adjust things before that.
 
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Well, change of plans. After getting a humidifier and dehumidifier in the wine fridge I became a little concerned about the amount of headroom to actually hang things. I also noticed that the compressor cycling on and off seemed to have a significant impact on the humidity levels inside the chamber which I thought may be compounded by the relatively small volume of air inside it. I started looking for an upright freezer to use instead and found a used Kenmore that’s about 6 feet tall that ought to do the trick.

I have the Inkbird programmed and it’s controlling the cooling and running the dehumidifier. I do plan to run the humidifier if needed, so I’ll have to get another controller since the ITC-608T I’m using only has 2 outlets.

Baby steps…



 
At midnight the internal temp was 50*...8 hours later it's only up to 57* and the compressor has yet to cycle on, though it ought to soon based on the Inkbird controller settings I programmed. It definitely seems to be more insulated and efficient, the wine cooler probably would've cycled on 15 or so times in that same 8 hour window.
 
Pretty happy with the performance of the freezer so far. I have it set to 56* allowing a 2* rise in temperature before it’ll turn the power back on. I’m getting about 1hr 50 minutes in between power cycles with 2* variation, whereas the wine fridge was cycling on every 30-35 minutes with 5-6 degrees variation. I may add a degree and have it hold a 3* window and see if I can go a little further between power cycles.

So far it seems to have a lower impact on humidity swings, I have the dehumidifier connected and set to pull moisture at 80% RH but it’s not gotten high enough to cycle on the dehumidifier yet.

Freezer:


Wine fridge:
 
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I now have the humidifier and dehumidifier placed in the freezer and controlled by the Inkbird units. I may switch to Auber controllers long term if this is a project I stick with, but these seem to be working well for now.

I have the “cooling” set to 56* allowing up to +3* deviance before it’ll turn on the freezer. I have the humidifier set to 75% RH allowing up to -3% RH before it’ll turn on. The dehumidifier is set to 75% RH allowing up to +5% RH before it’ll turn on.

The result is that I’m averaging 58* temp with the freezer turning on every 1hr 45m give or take, and 76% RH. When the freezer turns on it does drop the RH% below the configured threshold but it quickly recovers when the humidifier turns on. I feel pretty good about my ability to control environmental conditions at this point and will probably put something in there to begin curing soon.

 
If you were dry aging beef that may be the case, but for sausage or whole muscle fermenting/curing something more in this range is appropriate.
 
Well, finally got a cured something into the chamber after a good while of monitoring and tweaking. I cured a “coppa” about 10 days or so ago (the “money muscle” area of a Boston butt), and stuffed it into a beef bung tonight.

Rinsed of the cure and seasonings



Re-seasoned



Into the bung, which ended up seeming as though it was a little too small, but I eventually got it worked in.



Initial weight @ 1315 grams and sent on its maiden voyage in the chamber - needs to lose about 30% of its weight before it is ready.



I have a lonzino (cured pork loin) ready to hit the chamber, and then I plan to do a Spanish chorizo and some sort of salami. I bought a fish tank heater to create a warm humid environment using a cooler as a chamber that will serve as the “fermentation vessel” for things that need that sort of treatment.



Basically using the fish tank heater to control the temp of the water which obviously has an effect on the temperature of the air in the cooler, combined with adjusting the open lid to regulate humidity (and temperature?) to some degree. Inkbird is just being used to monitor environmental data, I may buy another SensorPush sensor at some point for logging ability if these shenanigans continue.



It’s been LOTS OF WORK :becky:
 
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