EVIL GROMMET

EVIL GROMMET WARNING!

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.