So...How's this for a rookie Fck up?

So, there I am...I have just finished by 3rd batch. Grabbed a sample, I'm confident everything is clean, the smell is amazing. All I need to do is put the airlock on and stash it away and in a few weeks, I should have some amazing IIPA.

Wait a second....the bung won't stay put.

Try as I might, trying both of the bung's I have. They won't stay put.

Okay...no biggie, everything is just wet and slippery....this is my first time using star san and it's just the fact that I didn't rinse and let it all dry first. Once it dries...it's all good.

The bung still won't stay...what is going on??? Okay....I'll just hold it in place, it'll dry and then it'll stay....no worries.

PLOP!!!!

Oh...is that the rubber bung....IN MY BEER???

I'm seriously depressed right now...I can't imagine there is any way this batch isn't ruined....I mean it's got a rubber plug floating in it and I have no idea how I'll get it out. I seriously can't believe I did that....especially since, after I had my little freak out moment and walked away for a few minutes, my second bung and airlock pushed right in and stayed in place perfectly......

My first batch was mediocre at best, my second is still flat after 8+ weeks and now I fear I've just wrecked my third batch, which is doomed to taste like rubber.

Not sure I'm cut out for this....

 

I've heard of this happening and the beers turn out fine with people leaving the stopper in the carboy. It happens enough that you can go on youtube and search "remove stopper from carboy" and you'll get several videos on using a plastic bag to get the stopper out.

 

Hahahaha , u totally messed up! Completely ruined batch. You'll never be a home brewer, hahahaha .

Yea, just kidding. It happens all the time, quit with the OCD and just let it ride. Worse things have happened, believe me( and everyone else here) keep the temp right and wait a week, you'll be just fine. You might want another stopper but use a wet rag until then.

 

Lol. I really laughed reading this!

Same thing happened with my first brew, but like a good redneck, I dried off the glass, got the bung in as far as I could, and duck-tapped that sucker on!

 

"Not sure I'm cut out for this..."

I've had worse than a rubber bung in my beer. Tuned out to be drinkable.

 

I've done it. No problem. You sanitized it first. People brewed beer before writing. I am convinced beer is hard to ruin. If it ends up being the best beer you ever tasted, you may add dropping the plug in yor beer as part of your process.

 

+1. Me too. No big deal.

 

No one has said it so I will. RDWHAHB. There's nothing to worry about, in a few weeks you'll have a great tasting, wonderful batch of beer to drink and you'll laugh the glass away!

 

aaannnd there's the name of your brewery: Slippery Bunghole Brewhaus

"Sometimes it slips in"

 

I'm very confident that the beer won't be affected by the bung being in there.

Ditch the standard rubber bungs. They're awful.

Either buy some carboy caps or universal bungs that don't fall in.

 

Dude, I dropped my bottle capper into porter at bottling time and it came out great. This was the moment I realized some people overly obsess about cleanliness.

Have you ever thought about the tomatoes that are used to make ketchup?
Think about how the clean the glassware is at the bar?

The beer you make at home is done in a higher level of cleanliness then most food at your local restaurant.


Do not get bummed out about effing up a brew. The beer gods grade on a curve. :]

I am drinking a beer that was flat but used the syringe trick to give it a new life.
You can add more bottling sugar to correct flat beer due to not adding enough sugar. If you added the correct amount of bottling sugar you might just have to wait longer for the beer to carbonate.

 

My stopper slipped into my carboy about a year ago. I still ferment in the thing. Its just hanging around in there. I probably should remove it. All my beers have tasted fine out of it.

I think I'm going to youtube how to remove it. I doubt I will even after.

 

This!

 

Also,do not rinse starsan as it is a no rinse sanitizer. So rinsing it off negates any sanitation you had. Craigtube had a neat tee shirt trick he showed in a video once to get the plug out..

 

Haha. Nice.

 

No problem.

Ferment it out, bottle, carbonate, cool it down, drink it. Repeat.

 

You need to drop in an entire airlock now so it will cancel out the rubber bung.

 

Congratulations, you win at internets.

 

Thanks guys....perhaps I was feeling a little melodramatic last night?

Anyway, the beer is happily bubbling away in the back of my closet now....and at the very least this batch will now be known as the Slippery Bunghole. Hahaha!

Thanks again.

 

What trick is that? I'm not familiar and would like to know please.

 

It's the Nitro effect. Take some under carbonated beer in a larger flavor injector and shoot it back into the glass. You have you inject back fast. It will foam and give you the Nitro cascade effect. Makes flat beer creamy and smooth.


I'll post cell pis later.

 

Sorry about hijacking. Just trying to help.
Oh and by the way, this beer was flat.

 

So here's a question that I may have forced an answer too. The recipe I'm following says rack to secondary 1-2 weeks into fermentation. However, this being the hot button issue it seems like, nearly every home brewer I talk to says that a) I don't need to do this and b) it could potentially wreck my brew. I had pretty much decided to not rack but now that I've got that plug in there, do you think I may be better off racking so as to limit the beers exposure to the rubber?

 

If you really want to get the rubber out just sanitized a racking cane and fish it out. I highly doubt your beer will taste like rubber because of the bung. It could taste like plastic/rubber for other reasons due to fermentation.

Sanitize a long spoon, racking cane or the inside part of the auto-siphon and get the bung out.

Racking to secondary is not going to wreck the beer as long as you don't splash it too much. Too much splashing introduces oxygen and has been said to oxidize the beer. I haven't had this happen to me though.

 

Since it was sanitized,I doubt it'll hurt anything.

 

Just make sure you use proper sanitation techniques, and rack it off. There's a lot of trub in an IIPA that I would want to get that beer off and let it bright and mellow. Plus it'll let your mind rest about the stopper, especially when you have a perfect opportunity to taste it when you transfer. But that's just my two cents.

 

It can stay in there. Part of the reason this happens is because people feel like they need to shove the airlock stem all the way through the bung stopper. You really don't need to do that. The flexibility of the drilled stopper will let it fit nicely if you don't make that mistake.

 

I've dropped those pesky rubber grommets in my buckets on more than one ocassion. You're golden. Pretend it never happened and fish it out after racking.