Here's my brief history, no not a history of my briefs! Like any of you really care. I've been homebrewing for about a year. I was born and raised in San Diego. I mainly brew double IPAs and Belgians. I entered my first competition (the Nationals), an American Pale Ale and scored 36. So there is definitely room for improvement.
The fist beer I brewed was called Dead Fly amber ale. I got the ingredients from Ballast Point (my local brew shop). The reason why I named it "Dead Fly" is becuase, as I was just about rack the fermented beer to a glass carboy for secondary, I noticed a fly lazily float over the plastic fermenter and just dive bomb straight down into my beer. I couldn't believe it. I thought to myself, "That mothefucking fly! What the fuck! Oh well at least that fly will die happy!". I couldn't find the fly for the life of me. With nothing else to do but rack the beer into the carboy, I cursed the day that flying bacterium was born.
As I was placing the bung into the wet glass of the carboy, I remembered reading something about being careful not to push the bung into the carboy to hard and at that moment it popped threw the opening and right into the beer. "Plop". "No fucking way, are you kidding me!!" Maybe I wasn't meant to brew, I thought. so I racked the beer back out of the carboy and back into the fermenter. When I was finished racking it out, there on the side of the carboy, was the dead fly! Ha...got ya you winged excuse for flying shit.
So now to get the bung out of the carboy. (anybody have any tricks for doing this?) I found a fairly easy way to do this. I got a pair of needle nose pliers and manuevered the bung to the opening of the carboy (small side of bung facing out). I put the needle nose pliers in the whole of the bung and opened the pliers and pulled the bung out. It popped right out after just a couple tries.
So I cleaned and sanatized the carboy, reracked the beer back into the carboy, CAREFULLY replaced the bung (with the airlock inserted in the bung) back in. About a month later my friends drank it all down at a party, having a good laugh about the Dead Fly and the Bung! And I've been brewing ever since!!
I've learned so much from listening to The BN and reading the forum. Thanks!
BN Army I salute you!!!
Brew On!
TAP
Sergeant, BN Army
