Curing Chamber

[mr_whipple]

All good there... I have both inkbird controllers as well as the evadry dehumidifier. One thing to be sure of is that the cool mist humidifier is analog and not digital so that when power is turned off by the controller, the unit will turn on again. Allowing the controller to turn it off and on.

Thanks for the response, and yep... it's analog so no worries there. That was one thing I had to make sure of for both units. Sweet. Now I'm gonna hafta drill a hole in this thing to route stuff. Seems to me there isn't anything internal to the side walls. There is a light on the ceiling in the center but from what I can see looking at the bottom of the fridge that is run up the back side along with the refrigerant lines to the chiller plate. I'll take some pics to document the progress of the build as I go along. Thanks again.

 

[indaswamp]

Watch out when you drill. Most newer freezers and refrigerators have the condenser lines run inside the walls....

 

[mr_whipple]

Ok. Back to it. Been busy in the process of switching jobs (almost there) and one of the vehicles decided I need to give a local shop a bucket of cash...

So I took the rear covers off to clean the fan and condenser coils and to 100% ascertain the location of the refrigerant lines and the wiring for the internal light.

Heres the refrigerant lines, and the gray wire is the temp probe attached to the side of the chiller plate.

Cleaned out what little dust was there with my air chuck. Thought I took another pic of the wiring, but the only wires going inside are in fact for teh light and they go straight up the back so I'm confident I'll hit nothing while drilling. Even if I did cut the wires to the light, I could care less.

Gave it a good washing inside with 50/50 mix of vinegar and water to knock out th eold fridge smell. Its gonna get it again, then I'll hit it with some steramine when I'm ready to set it up and run.

Did a test fit of all the items to be sure the probes and power cords were going to fit/reach where I want them and it all looks good. I'm going to hang the inkirds and a power strip (it's actually a surge suppresor I had laying around) on the side of the fridge with some heavy duty velcro so everything will be neat and firmly attached. My only concern is back filling the hole I'm going to drill. The humidity sensor and the power cord for the humidifier are big enough that I'll need to drill a 1" hole to pass them thru. Not sure how I'm going to handle that. I'm trying to avoid duct tape, and I don't want to use any material that will collect moisture and be a mold/nasty hazard. I'm going to Lowes / Home Depot this morning for some other stuff, but I'll look around and see if anything jumps out at me. Any suggestions or ideas, I'm all ears.

Gonna put the top two piece rack back in later. it's perfectly set up for hanging stuff so that's a done deal. The left piece of drip edge for the chiller plate had some nasty discoloration on the end that sat over the drain so I trimmed that off and seriously cleaned and disinfected the rest.. I don't think it will hurt to be a little short. Almost there.

Thanks for looking!

 

[mr_whipple]

So... I'm going to finish this off today or tomorrow depending on what interrupts me today. Many things I am but photographer isn't on the list.... so here is where I'm at.

I repurposed a scrap of deck board and velcro for the controllers, and straight velcro for the surge suppressor. 1 1/8" hole in the fridge to accommodate the wiring / plugs. Couldn't find a grommet that was to my liking, but I have some pieces of edge guard to keep the cables from chafing / wearing on the metal edge.

I was going to run some kind of dowels or rods to hang stuff on, but the rack had odd spacing and I couldn't find anything I really liked, so I'm going to put this wire cooling rack on top and zip tie it in place. That should give me enough flexibility in spacing of multiple items. If I don't like it, it's easily removed and replaced.

This is where I'm having trouble making a decision and would like some input please. I'm not so concerned about the placement of the temp sensor as I am the humidity sensor. I was shooting for centrally locating them both but for one thing, am worried about the output of the humidifier. I'm going to play with the variable output of it, and move it around so the nozzle doesn't point directly at the sensor or where things will be hanging... But I just have a nagging idea in my head that putting it on one of the walls will lead me to inaccurate readings and uneven humidity control. Am I over thinking this or would those sensors be ok in their approximate positions??

Obvioulsy I'm going to neaten up everything and route the wires through small cable holders etc.

 

[indaswamp]

Placement is more difficult in a small space. I suggest leaving the humidity sensor where you have it, but aim the nozzle of the humidifier toward either the door or the wall. You don't really want the output of the humidifier blowing directly on the bottoms of your salumi. Can also direct it to blow in a corner, and have the sensor off center and catercorner to the opposite corner a bit.

 

[mr_whipple]

Going to set up the humidity controls today, but the temp control setup looks to work like a champ.

I set it to 55F with a 2 degree differential. Took a while for the initial cool down from the ambient temp of about 68 degrees. Once it hit 55 and the controller shut off the compressor it overshot down to 52.8 in about 3 minutes. at the 4 minute mark it started rising again... about 11.5 minutes to reach 55, then about another 10 minutes to reach 57 to start the cycle again. It only takes about 3-4 minutes to drop back to 55 so I'm not too worried about overworking the compressor at this pace. 3-4 minutes on and 21 off seems reasonable to me. We'll see how it performs when I start using it for real, but looks to be a great start.

 

[mr_whipple]

So I've been monitoring this during the week with a wifi monitor I purchased after not feeling like standing around looking at the controller to see what the humidity cycle looked like. So here we go.

I adjusted the temp controller to 57F with a cooling diff of 1 and a 3 minute compressor delay.
The Humidity controller I set to 77% with both humidify and dehumidify differential to 4.7 and also a 3 minute compressor delay. I turned the humidifier nozzle more toward the door and set the output at it's lowest point and it produces a small barely visible stream of mist that blows up at the door and moves counterclockwise around the top of the chamber and chiller plate. Seems to me that it does a good job of evenly dispersing in the chamber.

This is what we get. Very repeatable cycle. Not knowing much about the art of drying meat I don't know how good this is, but I have been doing a lot of reading and it seems to fit the range I'm trying to achieve. The large downward spike is when the fridge turns on the chiller plate, then the humidification and de-humidification cycle which is fairly short. All that said, I'm also taking into consideration that all of these units are not calibrated and claim accuracy in the +/- 3% range, so that's another variable. I've seen some calibration posts and methods so I'll explore that, but for now I left the temp controller alone, but dropped the diff values on the humidity controller both from 4.7 to 4.0 to see what effect it has on the swings. I'll let that run and see what happens.

 

[indaswamp]

Lookin good.
This is the hardest part with just starting out in dry curing meat.
78%RH average might be a little low. Watch the surface area of your pieces, and if it starts to dry out too fast, while the deeper part is still soft an moist; then that is a tell tail sign of case hardening about to happen.

 

[mr_whipple]

Lookin good.
This is the hardest part with just starting out in dry curing meat.
78%RH average might be a little low. Watch the surface area of your pieces, and if it starts to dry out too fast, while the deeper part is still soft an moist; then that is a tell tail sign of case hardening about to happen.

Gotcha. I adjusted the RH setting up to 78.5. Lets see what that averages out to. I'm not planning on hanging anything quite yet as I'm still deciding where to start. I saw LoydB post on the duck breast proscuitto and that looked pretty straightforward. I also came across a few pork tenderloin ideas. I'll come up with something, but for now I have two vacuum seal Umai lonzinos and a vacuum seal Umai bresaola in the garage fridge. Gonna stick with whole muscle / salumi before taking the leap into the salami world. Baby steps.

 

[02ebz06]

I use a wine cooler for my curing chamber as well, and the InkBird controllers.
Your dehumidifier looks like same one I use, but my humidifier is much smaller.
It is pretty slick. Uses a 16 oz. plastic soda bottle to hold the water.
A valve screws right on the bottle and it stays closed until it is inserted into the unit.
I keep mine on the shelf so they are out of the way of the meat.
Also have a seedling sprouting mat to provide any necessary heat.
Takes up no space, lays flat on the floor.

Humidifier: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00125L0LA/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Seedling heating mat: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P7U259C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[mr_whipple]

I use a wine cooler for my curing chamber as well, and the InkBird controllers.
Your dehumidifier looks like same one I use, but my humidifier is much smaller.
It is pretty slick. Uses a 16 oz. plastic soda bottle to hold the water.
A valve screws right on the bottle and it stays closed until it is inserted into the unit.
I keep mine on the shelf so they are out of the way of the meat.
Also have a seedling sprouting mat to provide any necessary heat.
Takes up no space, lays flat on the floor.

Humidifier: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00125L0LA/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Seedling heating mat: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P7U259C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I thought about the heating aspect of this and didn't think I'd need that, but I've seen the seedling mat quite often in my reading and research. I'm starting to wonder if I'll be able to reduce the size of the swings in humidity or if it's not that big of a deal.

 

[indaswamp]

I only recommend a heat source if you have your chamber outside in a cold climate, or you do one batch of salami at a time and use your chamber to heat for fermentation. Outside of that-heat in a drying chamber is not necessary.

 

[02ebz06]

Yes, as Indaswamp said, heating pad is for curing chamber, not drying chamber.

 

[mr_whipple]

I only recommend a heat source if you have your chamber outside in a cold climate, or you do one batch of salami at a time and use your chamber to heat for fermentation. Outside of that-heat in a drying chamber is not necessary.

Yes, as Indaswamp said, heating pad is for curing chamber, not drying chamber.

Not pursuing the heating pad, just responding to the post and thinking out loud about the humidity swings. I've noticed that the dehumidification and cooling seem to coincide on my infrequent trips just to look at the controllers, but without a way to monitor I can't speak to the frequency of that. I'm wondering if I kept that from happening if the swing in humidity would be lessened.... hmm.

 

[indaswamp]

dehumidification and cooling seem to coincide on my infrequent trips just to look at the controllers

Yep. When the cooling cycle kicks on, humidity condenses on the chiller plate as it gets cold. this dehumidifies the air faster than the drop in temperature can raise it. Same reason why I made my cold dehumidifier for my big drying chamber...

https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/maturing-chamber-cold-dehumidifier-build.316049/

 

[mr_whipple]

Yep. When the cooling cycle kicks on, humidity condenses on the chiller plate as it gets cold. this dehumidifies the air faster than the drop in temperature can raise it. Same reason why I made my cold dehumidifier for my big drying chamber...

https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/maturing-chamber-cold-dehumidifier-build.316049/

I understand that, but after looking at it live yesterday I noticed that when the fridge goes on for cooling, the dehumidifier was already on dropping the humidity, so the double whammy when the chiller plate condenses is where I get the downward spike. I can't see building a rig like yours for a 6.2 cf wine fridge but there's got to be a way for me to break that cycle and not have the DH happening the same time as cooling. What I did this morning before leaving for work was to reduce the cooling on the fridge. I had the control set to full blast figuring the controller would be enough to turn it off/on so I set it to somewhere between 1-2 (7 is max) which was sufficient to cool it to ~55F when I first brought it home. I'll watch it thru the day and see what does.

 

[indaswamp]

I watched this a while back. Just ran across it again...good info.


KBFlyer too....

 

[mr_whipple]

I watched this a while back. Just ran across it again...good info.


KBFlyer too....

Thanks! Apparently he's not a fan of fans. And I love the way he pronounces scenario

 

[KBFlyer]

Right now I have the chamber pretty well dialed in. Temp holds with in 1 degree and RH is around 5% plus or minus of 75% average. When the Lonzino and Breasola are done and I see the results I will make further adjustments if needed.

 

[02ebz06]

I watched this a while back. Just ran across it again...good info.


KBFlyer too....

I learned that the hard way, and got the case hardening on the first batch of Genoa Salami I made.
Fan is no longer in curing chamber.