Curing Chamber setup questions

[onipar]

Hi, all! I'm new here. I'm a long-time smoker, wanting to dip my toes into the curing world.

I'm attempting to set up a curing chamber using my old mini fridge. It's the tiny cube-style found in dorms, so very limited space, hence my quandaries.

Essentially, I was going to purchase a temperature controller and humidity controller. Probably these, unless you have better suggestions. The temp control I was going to plug the fridge through for cooling, so it would turn the fridge on when needed, and off when not. And maybe a small light bulb to the "heating" outlet, though I'm thinking I probably won't need that.

My real question is about humidity. Given the limited space (and the fact I'm trying to do this as cheaply as possible), I won't be able to rig both a humidifier and a dehumidifier.

I was thinking I'd put a bowl of salt water in the fridge for humidity, and then rig a mini dehumidifier to control the percentage. Of course, the other way to go would be to get only a humidifier and rig that inside the fridge.

That's my question: which way should I go? My gut says the bowl of water and dehumidifier would produce better results, but this is only speculation.

And I guess my follow-up is simply will this chamber be adequate as a starter set up? Any suggestions, tweaks, changes, additions?

Thank you so much!

 

[mneeley490]

I made one similar out of a small wine cooler a few years ago. It's not perfect, but it does the job. You can see it in this thread here.
The temp control you linked to would work fine. Mine is a Johnson Controls analog, that does much the same thing. Otherwise, I use a dish of super-saturated salt water and this hygrometer to keep an eye on it. To keep air circulating, I inserted a small, low-flow computer fan attached to a timer that makes it run 5-10 minutes every hour.
I also have a non-working wine cooler that I use as a separate fermentation chamber. This just has a reptile heating pad in the bottom. Keeps it about a constant 75°.

I'll be interested to see what you come up with. Good luck!

 

[smokininthegarden]

What I do with my very small fridge is place a heating pad, one that is intended for propagating seeds
indoors on the bottom of the fridge, they are cheep and waterproof and with my setup it
keeps the temp inside the fridge about 20 deg above room temp. Which is just about where
you want it. For humidity, I find that the meat/sausage will pretty much control the humidity
by it self, when the meet is green the humidity will be very high, give or take 90% RH. As the
meet dries the humidity will drop accordingly. I plan on moving on to a larger setup someday but for
a starter setup this seems to work well without no hudge initial investment.

cal

 

[onipar]

Wow, thanks to both of you! It sounds like I'd be able to get away a lot cheaper than I was expecting. The most surprising thing to me is that in both your cases it sounds like its a lot more hands-off than I was expecting, especially when it comes to humidity.

Mneeley, so if your humidity gets too high, you just take the water dish out? I do have a small analog dial hygrometer that I could use to monitor the humidity in the chamber...

Smokininthegarden, do you find you don't need to ever *cool* the chamber with the refrigerator, and only use the heating pad? Do you use a temp controller with the pad, or just kind of leave it on and seems to keep your temps where they need to be?

If I'm able to skip the dehumidifier and humidity controller, and instead just get the temp controller to run the fridge and heater pad, that'd bring down costs a bit. Then just use a bowl of salt water and a hygrometer...that would be cheaper and save space, but also seems like I'd have to keep a closer eye on it.

I haven't thought much about airflow. One thing I read suggested that opening and closing the door to check the meat here and there is enough. Conversely I though the dehumidifier fan would circulate air, but if I don't use that element, I guess I might need a small fan or something.

 

[onipar]

SO, the heating pad idea sent me down a mini rabbit hole on Amazon and I found a cheaper temp controller (I have to double-check and make sure it's safe to plug a mini fridge into this thing), and a cheap heater pad. Then a bowl of saltwater and an analog hydrometer? The only cheaper set up I can think of is if I only get the temp controlled heater pad without the capability of turning the fridge on, but I'm afraid of not having the ability to cool, especially during the summer.

 

[onipar]

As a test, I put salt water into my mini fridge with the dial hygrometer. Last night it hit 75%, and just now when I checked it was down to 60%. I was surprised how low it went with the water in there.

 

[mneeley490]

Mneeley, so if your humidity gets too high, you just take the water dish out? I do have a small analog dial hygrometer that I could use to monitor the humidity in the chamber...
I haven't thought much about airflow. One thing I read suggested that opening and closing the door to check the meat here and there is enough. Conversely I though the dehumidifier fan would circulate air, but if I don't use that element, I guess I might need a small fan or something.

Onipar, humidity was the biggest challenge I had. It takes a while for it to even out, and when you put fresh items inside, it will go up for a while. When mine got too high, I'd replace the water dish with a small bowl of dry rice to bring it back down. Even with the fan, I'd still open the door every couple days just to change out the air inside. I considered the "humidifier-dehumidifier" route, but I couldn't find anything that didn't take up a lot of valuable space inside. I was able to use the water dish/rice method over the course of 16 months with my prosciutto with few problems, as long as I kept track of it. It's not the most scientific of methods, but it was cheap and it worked.
Mike

 

[onipar]

Onipar, humidity was the biggest challenge I had. It takes a while for it to even out, and when you put fresh items inside, it will go up for a while. When mine got too high, I'd replace the water dish with a small bowl of dry rice to bring it back down. Even with the fan, I'd still open the door every couple days just to change out the air inside. I considered the "humidifier-dehumidifier" route, but I couldn't find anything that didn't take up a lot of valuable space inside. I was able to use the water dish/rice method over the course of 16 months with my prosciutto with few problems, as long as I kept track of it. It's not the most scientific of methods, but it was cheap and it worked.
Mike

Ah, good idea. I was thinking of something like a dry sponge, but I like the idea of rice better. I agree--especially in a tiny mini-fridge--I didn't want to eat up space with a dehumidifier. I'm not even sure it would fit.

Thank you for the response. As long as I'm working with this small fridge, I think I may move forward with my previously mentioned layout, focused on temp control, and using your method for humidity control.