Storage question
 

Being a cheapskate, I've been thinking of getting an ordinary
refrigerator, second hand, to store my (+/-) 100-bottle collection. I
have never read of this as a feasible solution in this newsgroup. Is
there a reason a slightly modified home refrigerator should not be used
to store wine? Presumably, I would have to reconfigure the shelving and
set the thermostat to about 55 degrees F.

2 problems come to mind. Humidity and vibration. I don't know the
solutions for either of these as I tried and old refrigerator in the
past and it didn't work well so I bought an inexpensive built in wine
storage unit from Wine Enthusiast. I kept getting overly wet corks and
cloudy wine in the refrigerator.

In article .com>,
"AyTee" > wrote:

> Being a cheapskate, I've been thinking of getting an ordinary
> refrigerator, second hand, to store my (+/-) 100-bottle collection. I
> have never read of this as a feasible solution in this newsgroup. Is
> there a reason a slightly modified home refrigerator should not be used
> to store wine? Presumably, I would have to reconfigure the shelving and
> set the thermostat to about 55 degrees F.
>

> There's also the issue of vibaration

Depending on how much you want to modify the refrigerator, could one not
just relocate the motor and compressor?

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

On 9 Aug 2005 13:29:17 -0700, "AyTee" > wrote:

> Is
>there a reason a slightly modified home refrigerator should not be used
>to store wine?

It would not be great for long term storage, as humidity levels are
not maintained so corks may dry out. And in the shorter term you
probably don't need a fridge at all.

There's also the issue of vibaration, which most peolple say is
important. But I have seen no hard proof of this.
--
Steve Slatcher
http://pobox.com/~steve.slatcher

Steve Slatcher wrote:
> On 9 Aug 2005 13:29:17 -0700, "AyTee" > wrote:
>
>
>>Is
>>there a reason a slightly modified home refrigerator should not be used
>>to store wine?
>
>
> It would not be great for long term storage, as humidity levels are
> not maintained so corks may dry out. And in the shorter term you
> probably don't need a fridge at all.
>
> There's also the issue of vibaration, which most peolple say is
> important. But I have seen no hard proof of this.

The only problem that I can imagine with vibration arises from sediment
formation. Vibration will both inhibit (to some extent) sediment
formation and also keep the sediment suspended in the wine once formed.
However, it would make serving an older wine a bit of a mess, since one
would have to let the bottle settle for a week or so after removing it
from the fridge.

Mark Lipton

Thanks, all. I may try it anyway. If I do, I'll report the results.

Andy

On 9 Aug 2005 21:58:45 -0700, "AyTee" > wrote:

>Thanks, all. I may try it anyway. If I do, I'll report the results.

Another idea is to use a fridge or freezer without having it switched
on.

So you just use the insulating properties of the cabinet to smooth out
temperature variations.
--
Steve Slatcher
http://pobox.com/~steve.slatcher