I Stuck My Whole Arm in the Fermenter ...

Soooo, on my first BIAB try, I did everything pretty close to 100% correct. It is a Chocolate Stout, tasted great right after the boil. A much more gratifying experience than my two previous extract brews. Anyway, I have everything ready to go, take a gravity reading in the fermenter (1.055), and go grab the lid. After I seal it up, I push the rubber grommet all the way through the plastic lid with with air lock!!! Now, I freak out about what to do ... so I find an extra lid and find that it is also missing the little rubber grommet. I then try to fish it out with my long metal spoon, but obviously this turns out to be futile. I then proceed to wash my arm and sanitize it with the star-san spray bottle I had prepared. I was able to fish it out pretty quickly. This was a week and a half ago and now I am getting close to taking a gravity reading. I dont want to open the lid and find it contaminated. Has anyone had this problem before??? Am I screwed or should I have nothing to worry about?

At least you did not play bobbing for apples in it...there is that.

It will most likely end up being beer.

If the beer turns out good. You'll have to do this every time you make it.

Could you have infected it? Of course. Does it seem likely with the precautions you took? Probably not, but there will only be one way to find out.

GilaMinumBeer said:

If the beer turns out good. You'll have to do this every time you make it.

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HA ... maybe i will!

Ive done that before and my beer turned out great.

Replica batches that didn't include my arm hair didn't turn out nearly as well.

You just made liquid gold!

You now have to name this "I Stuck My Whole Arm In This" beer.

Good chance you'll be fine this time.

But in the future, not having a grommet in your airlock port for half a day is less chance-y than counting on star-san to sanitize every nook and cranny in the skin on your hand and arm. I had the same thing happen to me, and I just left the airlock in there loose until I could replace the grommet.

And FYI, Home Despot and most other hardware stores will have those grommets with the nuts and bolts.

slym2none said:

You now have to name this "I Stuck My Whole Arm In This" beer.

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Done! Haha

I have done this with, at least, 3 beers. I have not yet had an issue. That is not to say, I won't, ever. But I'd relax, and see how the beer turns out, if it were me.

Mike

slym2none said:

You now have to name this "I Stuck My Whole Arm In This" beer.

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"Elbow Deep Stout" IMO

BeardedBrews said:

"Elbow Deep Stout" IMO

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Too many names popping up that are inappropriate for this forum.....

Use second runnings for a "Just The Tip" ale?

Been there, done that, drunk it. No worries.

In my case it was a badly tightened faucet.

Cheers.

If it gets infected, you might have had a hand in it.

Steady-Hopper said:

If it gets infected, you might have had a hand in it.

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Make sure to lick it clean before you stick it into the next one....

I did this once. My fermenter has a tap at the bottom, but it was leaking around the seal. The nut to tighten is on the inside, at the bottom.

So, I washed my arm, sterilised it, then quickly grabbed the nut and tightened it.

I don't recall which batch this was done to, but I've never had a bad batch, so I obviously got away with it (that one time). Naturally I check the nut carefully every time now.

New to this great hobby.

Glad to read that you stuck your arm in. My first batch was siphoning so slowly that I took a glass, washed and sanitized it and my hand and dipped the glass into the priming pot and then poured the beer through a funnel and into my bottles to condition. One more week of conditioning before drinking.

As long as you recently bathed all is well.

really good beer ... Ill name it it "whole hand stout"