I have an IKEA/Whirlpool IT8WSKXRW01. The fridge was used at the house I'm renting as the main fridge. Worked fine, then suddenly the freezer portion stopped freezing. Soon afterwards the fridge portion stopped getting cold too. The freezer was only reaching about 35 F. There was light frost on the back of the freezer, so I assumed it was the defroster that didn't work. LL replaced the fridge.

I homebrew so I asked if I could keep it as a lagering fridge. Assuming the defroster is the issue, I really don't need the freezer part at all. The fridge has been sitting for about 2 weeks at room temp. I plugged it back in last night to see if since the coils manually defrosted and if the fridge was working again. The freezer compartment got down to 28 F, and the fridge compartment got down to 32 F. It didn't seem like the fridge ever shut off after sitting overnight.

Here is what I need this fridge for, so I'm not sure if this is a problem. To lager I need the fridge to stay at around 50 to 55F for about a month. This is achieved with the use of an external overriding thermostat.

After that I need to turn the fridge compartment down to about 32F for two weeks. The fridge will be warmed completely back up to room temp. In my mind if the problem was the coils needing defrosted, this should manually do it. But I was concerned that after sitting at room temp for two weeks, the freezer was no capable of getting back down to 10F. The last thing I want is the fridge to completely fail half way through lagering. Does this sound like it would still work for this purpose? Or does it sound like something else is wrong?