Fermentation Support Forum

Has anyone out there converted a mini-fridge into an incubation chamber for Tempeh? What kind of thermostat do you use? Is it a straight forward prcoess? I am in the planning stages of the process. Thanks!

I have not done this yet, but I believe there's may have.

I would start with a mini fridge as you suggest and buy a dual temp controller like this one. https://smile.amazon.com/Inkbird-Itc-30 ... controller

Then, add a simple light bulb as a warming element, plug the two into the controller, and done.

AdamG wrote:Has anyone out there converted a mini-fridge into an incubation chamber for Tempeh? What kind of thermostat do you use? Is it a straight forward prcoess? I am in the planning stages of the process. Thanks!

I have a couple of those inkbird thermostats from Amazon but I am not using them ATM.

Another option, which I prefer is a temperature controller using a STC-1000 thermostat where the firmware can be modified so that it can be programmed. That allows the temperature to be modified over time. This can be particularly effective when fermenting yoghurt which benefits from a short high temperature before lowering to 40-43C for the remaining fermenting time. That is meant to improve the fermentation and make it proceed faster. That would be very difficult with the inkbird but would be easy with a firmware updated STC-1000.

Many home brewers use this temperature controller to control their brewing. It should provide a lot more control than the inkbird. I wanted to use this to make a fermenting chamber using an old broken convection microwave oven. I have purchased an Arduino Uno R3 which is used to re-program the firmware in the ST-1000 but so far other things are more pressing so I have not yet made any progress on it. I do need to get the STC-1000 ordered which I will sort out very soon so that I have it ready for when I have time to do it.

https://github.com/matsstaff/stc1000p

Another hardware version which someone has done a similar thing but this hardware has a much smaller eprom so programming is far more limited.
https://github.com/Emile666/stc1000_stm8
The board type is important because the firmwares only work with specific boards and controllers. I will leave it to you to find the correct version, there is a link to the seller in the first link above. Searching brewers forums should also throw up more information as well.
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This is a bit more work but it should be far more flexible.

toaster oven is my favorite for small batches`, for bigger ones that tend to overheat the gas oven is better, both heated with light bolts on cheap controllers , works perfectly

I use a five gallon pail with a leg warmer in the bottom. Thermometer is glass bulb type. The heating mat has as control ON LMH.
Don't get too elaborate. All you need is a temperature about 31C give or take a few degrees.