Ack! Airlock/Bung won't stay on after racking!

[Vertumnus]

Hi, new member and new winemaker (as of summer '13) here. Made a carrot wine on 04/04/2014 following Winemaker's recipe handbook. Starting SG 1.090. SG before racking: 1.040, as per recipe instructions. Racking went fine and all today 04/09/14, but now I can't get the darned bung and airlock to stay on! It keeps pushing up and out, exposing itself to air, the carbon dioxide must be too strong to simply go through the airlock. How do I fix this problem?

 

[cintipam]

My honest opinion is that the SG was too high to rack to secondary container. Until it hits about 1.010 I leave it in the fermenting bucket. If I were you I would wad up a sanitized cheesecloth and put it in the neck of the carboy. It should stay in place without blowing off or letting bad stuff into the wine. When it hits 1.010 you should have no trouble with the airlock.

Hoping you get a few more answers in case I'm way off base here.

Pam in cinti

 

[Runningwolf]

That happens to me periodically. I just switch to a different bung. If it's the only one you have try soaking it in hot water for ten minutes. Now dry it and try again. Sometimes they just need to be able to relax back to original form before being place back in. Make sure the neck of the carboy and bung are dry.

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi and welcome, Vertumnus. Sometimes a bung will be forced out of a carboy if the glass surface is wet or if the bung is wet so you might want to see if you can dry the surfaces with say a paper towel . That said, I am unfamiliar with the recipe you refer to but I wonder why the recipe would recommend that you apply an airlock when there is so much residual sugar still to be fermented. I would have thought that until the gravity falls to closer to 1.000 (perhaps 1.004 ) that it would be perfectly OK to leave the wine in the primary and allow the CO2 to escape with little hinderance except perhaps a towel or a loosely fitting lid. I would have thought that with so much sugar still available for the yeast and with the initial gravity of 1.090 the yeast would be active enough to produce enough CO2 to protect the carrot wine from any possibility of oxidation.

 

[Runningwolf]

Incidentally, welcome to the forum!

 

[wildvines]

Make sure bung is dry and the opening if the carboy.


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[Vertumnus]

Thanks for the advice, I'll try the drying out method first and if that doesn't work, I'll leave it for a day or so with a sanitized rag on it to let it go down a bit in SG.

 

[wildvines]

Ya I had the same thing happen. Kept slipping out. So I dried the bung and opening. Since the sanitizer makes things slippery and if still bit wet won't stay on right.


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[Vertumnus]

Dried out the bung and carboy opening as thoroughly as I could and it seems to have worked! It's not budging, for now. We'll see in a couple hours, but for now crisis is averted. Thanks again, all.

 

[wildvines]

Dried out the bung and carboy opening as thoroughly as I could and it seems to have worked! It's not budging, for now. We'll see in a couple hours, but for now crisis is averted. Thanks again, all.

Nice. Keep us updated. Just great to know some stress of your back.


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[wildvines]

Welcome to the site. Great forum with friendly peeps. Many willing to help and no one passes judgment on a so called dumb question.


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[cpfan]

Hi, new member and new winemaker (as of summer '13) here. Made a carrot wine on 04/04/2014 following Winemaker's recipe handbook. Starting SG 1.090. SG before racking: 1.040, as per recipe instructions. Racking went fine and all today 04/09/14, but now I can't get the darned bung and airlock to stay on! It keeps pushing up and out, exposing itself to air, the carbon dioxide must be too strong to simply go through the airlock. How do I fix this problem?

If the problem continues, you might want to get a half-size smaller bung.

Out of interest, what vessel and bung size are you using?

Steve

 

[Vertumnus]

It's a five gallon carboy. I don't know how to measure the sizes of the bung, I just brought the carboy to the homebrew shop and picked one that fit.

Update to the wine, no further problems with it sticking on, it's merrily bubbling away. This is actually the farthest I've gotten with a batch, I didn't have good sanitation procedures beforehand and all my previous ones went bad. People like getting free bottles of vinegar a lot less than free bottles of wine, that's for sure!

 

[cpfan]

It's a five gallon carboy. I don't know how to measure the sizes of the bung, I just brought the carboy to the homebrew shop and picked one that fit.

When I ran a store, that's what I would recommend. Bring the vessel in, and we'll figure out what fits.

Standard 5 gallon carboys usually take a 6.5 bung. Some brands of these are not marked with their size.

Steve

 

[Floandgary]

Agreed,,,, likely just the bung and/or carboy a little wet... If it were fermentation pressure, your post would have included "the water is being blown out of the airlock" too!!

 

[Bibelljim]

I had exactly the same problem. What I had to do is get another bung. The carboy openings are slightly different in size.

I ended up getting a rubber one with a hole drilled in it...