HELP! foreign object in my beer!

So my fiancé accidentally dropped a small rubber band in my 5 gallons of beer while helping me rack my beer for secondary fermentation. Is this going to hurt anything? Is it going to effect the taste of my beer significantly ?

This is after primary fermentation has finished? Ouch, you may be SOL but only time will tell!

Yes

After about 90 brews I have figured out that it is pretty difficult to F... up a brew.

Don't. worry. it will be beer.

A single rubberband? Highly unlikely... fish it out though.

When I do something like this I usually dither a while, then wash my arm in StrSan and go fishing. Unless your secondary is a carboy. Then you're f**ked.

I'd do the opposite. The damage (likely none BTW) was already done when the rubber band hit your wort. Sticking your arm in there will only increase the likelihood of an infection, so leave it alone.

Not to mention, a washed arm is likely to have more bugs than a dry rubber band anyway.

I usually dry hop with at least 3 rubber bands to get any aroma

I vote for fishing it out and I'm sure you'll be fine.

the only problem is its in a glass carb.. I think I'm just going to leave it and have a 1 week secondary instead of 2-3.

I doubt this will cause any problems at all. Wel all stick stuff in beer, wine thiefs for samples, auto siphons to rack to secondary etc. Sure all of this stuff is clean and sanitized, but how clean? You are also opening the beer up to microbes and bacteria everytime you do this. The beer has already gone through primary, so there is some alcohol in there to kill some nasties as well. If you are doing a secondary in a carboy, I wouldn't worry about it. If in a bucket, it wouldn't be too hard to get out with a sanitzed instrument.

Actually, unless you rolled the rubber band on the floor just before it fell into the secondary, you should be OK. As mentioned, the beer has plenty of alcohol to stifle infections and it's doubtful that the rubber will significantly affect the taste of your beer.

Who knows? Latex lambic might work!

Hahaha thank you for the encouragement. I will let you know how this ends. If i create a new brew fad just make sure I get credit.

Bacteria usually likes to hang out on stuff that has food on it, whether it's skin flakes or old dry wort. Rubber bands don't usually make the cut, so you're probably fine. If you were really worried about its presence you could just open up a wire cost hanger and bend a hook on it, sanitize, and swoop it out. It will probably be fine though.