First time troubles

[slugdoug]

Ok this is my first time trying to make beer and it has been a little bit of a struggle but I finally got to secondary fermentation stage but ran into an embarrassing problem. I was putting the airlock into my carboy and it was wet from the sanitizer and didn’t want to seal very well so I gave it an extra little push and it popped down inside the neck of the bottle. It sealed really nice and appears to be working just great but once the secondary fermentation is complete I’m going to need to get this out of the bottle; does anyone have any ideas. I have been nervous about making this first batch and now this happened; please help.

 

[TexLaw]

It's still stuck in the neck? Lucky you! Although, don't you want to be with the rest of us cool kids who are in the "Pushed the Stopper All the Way In" club?

Sanitize something that can fit through the hole, hook underneath the stopper, and is rigid enough to pull it out. You might be able to use a coathanger, but you can probably find something better around your house. Once you have the stopper out, inspect it to see if you scratched up or gouged it. If you did, toss and replace it.

Don't sweat it.


TL

 

[uglygoat]

you can fish it out with a coat hanger, a butter knife etc.

 

[cmorkat]

+1 to the coat hanger steralized of course it is what I did.... I mean heard that someone did lol

 

[reshp1]

Everyone does it once, although it looks like you're luckier than the rest of us. I used an allen wrench to pull mine out.

 

[slugdoug]

Thanks for the responses and it's nice to know I'm not the first one to do this. I thought about the hanger but I didn't think it would be strong enough but I like the allen wrench idea and will give that a try..

 

[JMSparty08]

Thanks for the responses and it's nice to know I'm not the first one to do this. I thought about the hanger but I didn't think it would be strong enough but I like the allen wrench idea and will give that a try..

That's nothing. I pushed the airlock in the top of my bucket fermenter without holding the rubber seal in place and pushed the seal all the way through the lid and into the beer. No biggie tho since it was sterilized. Just fished it out with a the sterilized brewing spoon. Pain in the ass and a bit of anxiety at first tho.

 

[TexLaw]

I used an allen wrench to pull mine out.

Now, that's an idea!


TL

 

[AFAJ Brew Guy]

+1 o the allen wrench. I just had to do that with my Apfelwein. LHBS had the bin of stoppers mislabeled and I picked up the wrong size. Bad thing is I almost dropped the wrench in.

 

[Nurmey]

A plastic bag is all you need to get a bung out of a carboy. I speak from recent experience that this works great!

First finish fermenting your brew, shove that stuck bung all the way into your carboy, and syphon your beer out as usual. I cleaned out as much trub as possible to eleminate making a mess all over the kitchen.

1. Place half the bag through the carboy neck;
2. Roll the bung (in carboy) under the plastic bag;
3. Blow into plastic bag enough air to make a small balloon;
4. Pull out bag;
5. Bung will come out with bag

Here is a video showing how to do it with a cork and bottle but it works just the same with the carboy.

http://www.break.com/index/remove_a_cork_from_the_wine_bottle.html