Built structures
Steam oven as an incubator
A steam oven held at a low setting with the food in a covered container, so cultures incubate in humid, even warmth without drying.
Equipment
626 sourced equipment pages: vessels, tools, appliances and built structures.
Heat, smoke and climate
What sets the temperature, the smoke and the air: kettles, incubators, cold stores, smokers and dryers.
Built structures
Warm cabinet with an internal food container
Any warm box, proofer, dehydrator cabinet or adapted fridge whose conditions reach the food through a separate container chosen for that culture.
Built structures
Supported pot inside a water bath
A food pot held at a fixed height inside a larger vessel of controlled hot water: the water distributes heat while the milk or whey inside stays still and away from the heater.
Built structures
Sous-vide bath with an open-topped inner pot
A small open metal pot held on a rack or bridge inside a circulator bath, so food can be stirred, added to or cut while bath water heats it from outside.
Built structures
Shallow pan over controlled hot water (yuba pan)
A wide shallow pan of soy milk standing in a controlled hot-water bath, so that the bath heats evenly while the open surface forms film after film of yuba.
Built structures
Proofer as a multifunction culture station
A heat-only proofer used in turn for tempeh bags, natto jars, kombucha, yogurt and black garlic, each with its own container, rack and water-tray setting.
Built structures
Several jars in one bath
A circulator tank holding a rack of identical jars, so several small batches share one temperature for side-by-side trials of cultures, milks, ratios or flavourings.
Built structures
Custom brewery used as a nested cheese vat (Hamblyn)
New Zealand home cheesemaker Tony Hamblyn's custom brewery, in which a 50-litre cheese pot hangs in a 70-litre mash tun of circulated hot water; later one tank served purely as hot water.
Built structures
Freezer, fridge and cloth clarification set-up
A liquid set with 5 g gelatin per kg is frozen solid, then thawed in the refrigerator in a cheesecloth-lined perforated pan; the drip comes out clear.
Built structures
Drying cabinet with lined trays
A dehydrator or drying box set up with mesh trays for slices and herbs and solid liners for purées, drying by warm moving air to a recipe's own endpoint.
Built structures
Dehydrator as a jar incubator
A dehydrator with its trays removed or shelves rearranged, holding capped jars of cultured milk at a low setting so the machine warms but does not dry.
Built structures
Brewer for bulk work and a finishing pan
The kettle heats and reduces a large volume of thin liquid such as whey; before it nears the brewer's minimum fill the batch moves to a wide pan for the thick, stirred finish.
Built structures
Brewer as a hot-water service station
The brewer holds clean water at a set temperature for washed-curd cheeses and other hot-water jobs, beside a separate cheese pot, instead of heating milk directly.
Equipment
Amazake saccharification vessel warmer
A purpose-rated warm water bath or heated vessel with a food probe, holding rice or sake-lees amazake at the 50 to 60 C range where koji enzymes turn starch into sugar.
Equipment
Shoyu moromi vessel cabinet
A corrosion-resistant cabinet with trays under brine vessels and gentle indirect heating and cooling, for the moromi stage of soy sauce, where soy koji ages in brine for months.
Equipment
Miso maturation cupboard
A low-power controlled cupboard for the maturation stage of miso, holding weighted, covered food-safe pots, with spill containment, kept separate from koji production.
Equipment
Natto incubation chamber
A warm, humid enclosure for natto, the Japanese fermented soybean dish made with Bacillus subtilis, holding it at roughly 35 to 45 C for about a day before cooling.
Equipment
Tempeh incubator with heat removal stage
A ventilated, cleanable enclosure with spaced perforated pouches or trays and a gentle heat source, for incubating tempeh, which warms itself as the Rhizopus mould grows.
Equipment
Japanese koji tray incubator
An insulated cabinet with shallow food-safe trays and controlled heat and humidity, for making koji on a grain bed from a commercially supplied culture, in the Japanese manner.
Equipment
Small warm fermentation cupboard
A small washable enclosure with adjustable shelves and a guarded heat source, used for warm fermentation of foods that need a temperature above room level.
Equipment
Water bath incubator for small fermentation vessels
A reusable insulated tub that holds several small covered fermentation vessels upright in heated water, using an immersion heater and separate bath and product probes.
Equipment
Insulated cooler incubator for yoghurt jars
A washable insulated cooler with a removable jar rack and a low-power heater, holding covered yoghurt jars near 110 F (about 43 C) for several hours.
Equipment
Katsuobushi smoking and drying equipment
Enclosed cooking, smoking and drying equipment used in the multi-stage process that makes katsuobushi, the dried, smoked and mould-treated bonito of Japan, in repeated stages.
Built structures
Waters-Bond remote-firebox smoker
A plywood smoking chamber fed from a separate firebox made of a 55-gallon drum, designed in 1960 at a Pascagoula, Mississippi, fisheries laboratory for smoking mullet.
Built structures
Solar tunnel dryer with photovoltaic fans
A solar collector feeds a drying tunnel, and a photovoltaic panel powers a fan that moves the warm air over the trays. The Hohenheim-derived design comes in several sizes, which are not interchangeable.
Equipment
Coolgardie safe
An Australian food cupboard cooled by water evaporating from wet hessian panels, which draws heat from the air inside. It dates from the goldfields of Western Australia in the 1890s.
Built structures
FAO A-frame solar tent dryer
A low-cost, direct solar tent with a black back and ground, a clear front and roof, a raised mesh platform and high exhaust holes. The FAO manual for Afghanistan describes its construction.
Built structures
UC Davis chimney solar dryer
A passive solar dryer built as a long black-covered table with a clear-film chimney that draws air over mesh trays. The University of California Davis 2018 manual gives its cut list and build steps.
Built structures
Backyard smokehouse frame (UConn Extension)
A wood-framed backyard smokehouse built from pine tongue-and-groove boards, with a sloped roof, vent dampers and a door, set out in a Connecticut Extension guide for smoking fish, pork, turkey, jerky and sausage.
Equipment
Indirect solar collector and drying cupboard
A solar air collector that heats air separately, then passes it through a shaded tray cupboard and out of a chimney. The product never sits in direct sunlight.
Equipment
Direct solar cabinet dryer
A glazed cabinet in which sunlight passes through a transparent cover onto a dark interior while air moves over mesh trays. The Brace-type cabinet is documented with a dimensioned drawing from 1978.
Equipment
Charcoal-fired kilishi dryer (modified six-tray cabinet)
A six-tray charcoal-fired cabinet, modified at Ahmadu Bello University to dry kilishi with insulation, a DC fan on a photovoltaic panel and a relocated chimney.
Equipment
Dosa and idli batter incubator
A warm, sheltered spot or closed box used to ferment rice and black gram batter overnight for idli and dosa, where the kitchen runs cool.
Equipment
Screened shade drying herb cabinet
A mesh-fronted cupboard, or a stack of food-suitable trays, that dries herbs and leaves in shade out of rain and direct sun. It needs no heater; a low-power fan is an optional add-on.
Equipment
Food-grade tote with low-voltage extraction fan
A washable food-grade tote with removable rails, insect screens, a drip tray and a low-voltage extraction fan, a simple dryer for biltong that avoids rebuilding a refrigerator.
Equipment
Dehumidifying cabinet dryer
A recirculating drying cabinet that removes moisture from its own air in a separate stage and drains the water away. The sources do not establish how well such a cabinet performs at food-drying conditions.
Equipment
Modular heated tray dryer
A cleanable insulated cabinet with removable food-suitable trays, a guarded heater and a fan duct. The design is documented as a proposal and has not been tested as a unit.
Equipment
Sweet potato curing cabinet
A small enclosure that holds freshly harvested sweet potatoes at high heat and humidity for about a week so the skins harden and wounds heal, before they move to a cooler store.
Equipment
A measured dehydrator retrofit
A way to add independent temperature logging to an existing food dehydrator without changing its built-in controls or protections. It is a monitoring method, not a rewiring plan.
Built structures
Dedicated cold fridge for dry-ageing beef
A cold fridge kept only for dry-ageing beef, held at 1 to 3 C with controlled humidity, airflow and handling, so that the meat ages without spoiling.
Equipment
Black garlic ageing cabinet
A heated, humidity-controlled cabinet for holding whole garlic at high temperature and humidity while it darkens into black garlic. The change is browning chemistry, not live fermentation.
Equipment
Climate-adaptive biltong cabinet for damp conditions
A proposed biltong cabinet that controls air intake, exhaust and recirculation so drying can respond to damp outside air. It is a documented design, not a tested unit.
Built structures
Warm sausage fermentation incubator
A warm, humid incubator kept apart from the drying fridge, where fermented sausage is held through its fast-culture stage before moving to drying.
Built structures
Sausage drying cabinet after fermentation
A cabinet that dries fermented sausage after the fermentation stage, with humidity removal, airflow and temperature control, once the product has reached its safe fermented state.
Built structures
Kakigoya persimmon drying hut
A wooden hut attached to a house in Shimane Prefecture, Japan, where persimmons are hung in the sun and wind and then dried indoors for hoshigaki.
Equipment
Solar-biomass hybrid cabinet dryer
A cabinet dryer that takes its heat from a flat-plate solar collector by day and from a separate biomass stove when the sun is not enough, with the stove's flue kept apart from the drying air.
Built structures · Place
Seokbinggo (Korean stone icehouse)
Gyeongju Seokbinggo is a Joseon-era semi-subterranean stone ice store at Wolseong in Gyeongju, Korea. The surviving stone structure dates to 1738 and was moved to its present site four years later.
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Built structures · Place
Metsovo dairy smoking facility
The Baron Tossizza Foundation’s Metsovo cheese factory combines cheesemaking and ripening, with Metsovone smoked after its maturation. Sources document the room used for ripening but not the smoking chamber’s design.
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Built structures · Place
Korpela farm riihi (Hankasalmi)
The small Korpela farm riihi, dated to the 1840s, combined a heated grain-drying and threshing room with an annex for straw and chaff.
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Built structures
Tidewater smokehouse
Tidewater Virginia smokehouses were separate buildings for curing and storing meat. Documentary references attest to purpose-built examples by the early eighteenth century; a HABS photograph records one interior at Sherwood Forest.