Sausage curing cabinet - Construction project

[JC in GB]

I picked up a non-working upright freezer over the weekend. Cost was $0 and the cabinet is in great shape.

I am going to remove the guts. I wasn't going to until I realized that the cooling coils were used as shelves inside the freezer.

Once the compressor and coils are gone, I am going to drill some holes in the top for power, control modules, and cooling module.

I am going to run the cooling for the unit with a thermoelectric cooler and a heat exchanger inside the cabinet. Control will be with a Black Cat PID controller.

I am going to run a small ultra-sonic vaporizer in the bottom of the unit for humidity regulation controlled by a humidity controller.

I do have some questions though that I am finding varying answers.

1) Humidity range for curing chamber. (60% - 90%)???

2) Temperature range for fermentation and curing. ( 40F - 100F) (4C - 38C)??

Thanks for any assistance....

JC

 

[Brokenhandle]

will be watching...want to see the responses you get in case I ever get around to building one.

Ryan

 

[BGKYSmoker]

Get a Crane teardrop cool mist ultrasonic. Use distilled water
Thermoelectric like in a wine fridge?
Heat exchanger? A 100w ceramic element they use for reptiles works well, even 2 of em.

Dont forget pH test strips or a pH meter. Strips you want both 3.9-5.7 and 4.9-6.9

 

[JC in GB]

Get a Crane teardrop cool mist ultrasonic. Use distilled water
Thermoelectric like in a wine fridge?
Heat exchanger? A 100w ceramic element they use for reptiles works well, even 2 of em.

Dont forget pH test strips or a pH meter. Strips you want both 3.9-5.7 and 4.9-6.9

Is there a special type of pH strip that is used for testing sausage?

I am going to have a thermoelectric module cool water and circulate it to a radiator inside the cabinet.

I will look into that 100 W element for heating.

Thanks,

JC

 

[BGKYSmoker]

PHYDRION PH STRIPS (3.9-5.7 RANGE)
PHYDRION PH STRIPS (4.9-6.9 RANGE)

 

[JC in GB]

PHYDRION PH STRIPS (3.9-5.7 RANGE)
PHYDRION PH STRIPS (4.9-6.9 RANGE)

Got it... Thanks...

JC

 

[JC in GB]

UPDATE:

I have removed the guts from the freezer cabinet and now I have a clean, open cabinet to work with.

I have ordered the HVAC/humidity hardware for the cabinet.

Next step is start drilling holes in the cabinet for the control systems.

I will start taking photos at that point. Right now, an empty white freezer isn't hard to envision.

I am going to start out with a 120W cooling module and a 250 W PTC heater module.

Precision humidistat with an ultrasonic humidifier. ( I am going to modify the humidistat to run an SSR instead of a relay.)

One or more circulation fans in the cabinet bottom.

This is the boring part of the project, getting all the supplies together.

Next post will have photos.

JC

 

[SmokinEdge]

Watching

 

[indaswamp]

Just watch the speed and cycling times on the fans. Too much air flow-even with all other parameters at optimum- can dry the salamis too fast....

 

[JC in GB]

Just watch the speed and cycling times on the fans. Too much air flow-even with all other parameters at optimum- can dry the salamis too fast....

Thanks. I was wondering about that. I may put the fans on a cycle timer.

On 5 minutes off 30 is where I am thinking.

JC

 

[JC in GB]

Parts are starting to trickle in for the curing chamber project. I just completed my circulation blower and heater assembly.

My apologies for the crude look but I am not too concerned about aesthetics when I build initial prototypes and this just happened to be the enclosure I had on hand.

Heater and cabinet circulation blower:

250 W PTC heater and 10 CFM 12 VDC blower...

JC

 

[JC in GB]

I got my humidifier unit yesterday and to my chagrin, I found that it has a push button on/off/speed selector. This means that just applying AC won't turn the unit on.

So, this morning, I took the unit apart and removed the pushbutton switch and replaced it with wires.

I built a timer (555 monostable multivibrator) to give me a one second pulse to the on switch on the humidifier to turn it on when the SSR gets triggered from the humidity controller.

This should be enough to turn the unit on and off automatically.

JC