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If you are using a food-grade bucket as your primary
fermenter, take heed of the innocuous little black grommet
resting quietly in the bucket's lid.
It is evil. By evil we
mean that you will be following your brew instructions
perfectly; your ingredients will be lovingly boiled, your
wort will be properly cooled, and your equipment will be
meticulously sanitized. You will even be clutching a
homebrew, and that agreeable warming flush will draw a smile
upon your face. And yet, during that innocent moment
when you lock down your bucket's lid and push the airlock
into the grommet - bam! The grommet will pop out of
its hole and drop into your fresh wort. This is a
buzzkill of epic proportions, and undoubtedly, as a new
brewer, you will find endless and utterly hopeless ways of
trying to fish out the grommet from the bottom of your
precious wort. Save yourself the madness and
frustration by following these tips:
Evil
Grommet Tips:
1. When fitting your airlock to your (evil) grommet, gently
twist the airlock into the grommet. Do not harpoon
the airlock into the grommet. It is evil, and it will
pop out and fall into the wort.
2.
If you're really ambitious, you may fit the airlock into the
grommet before locking down the lid. Then if the evil
little sucker falls to the floor, you can lay it to rest
beneath your boot heel!
3. If your evil grommet
does fall into your bucket, do not panic and start
performing crazy homebrew tricks. Simply cover the
hole with tape. While the beer is fermenting, the
carbon dioxide gas will produce a positive pressure within
the bucket and will safely find its way out. After
siphoning out the beer, you can retrieve, clean and reuse
the (evil) grommet. |
