It’s happened to many home brewers and home wine makers, your rubber stopper falls through the neck of the carboy. When it happens to you, you can feel desperation in your belly. Well there is a way to get your stopper out of the carboy easily.
I actually learned this trick for when wine a cork gets stuck in the wine bottle but it’s the same exact thing for a carboy. Done it with both a carboy and plenty of wine bottles – this trick is completely and ace.
NOTE: When you do this in front of either family or friends you look extremely cool.
Watch And Learn:
For carboy’s with fallen stoppers it’s the same exact thing. But if you would like it in words it goes as follows:
- Empty out the contents of the vessel. For a carboy, siphon liquid.
- Move the stopper to the ledge of the carboy next to the neck.
- Take a clean plastic bag, push the bottom part of the bag through the neck of the carboy holding on to the end where the handles are.
- Once 90% of bag is in the carboy blow into the bag (where the handles are) as much as you can. You are trying to make it take up as much space as possible with the bag.
- The end of the bag should be past the rubber stopper.
- Slowly start to pull the bag towards you.
- The objective is that the bag will grab the rubber stopper.
- Apply even and slow sturdy pressure to the bag (especially as it gets into the neck of the carboy).
- Pull until the rubber stopper comes out.
This bag method works like a charm. So try it with fallen corks in wine/beer bottles or rubber stoppers in your carboy’s.
Hope it helps!
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Jay's Brewing Blog 
August 26, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Holy crap!!! This is awesome. I totally made this work.
August 27, 2012 at 12:46 am
Yea it’s pretty amazing.
November 9, 2012 at 8:38 pm
thank you! i still couldn’t believe how easy you made it look until I tried it myself. I was brewing beer in a 6 gallon carboy with a decent size cork and it worked just as well!!!!
November 9, 2012 at 9:42 pm
Glad it helped make sure to spread the wealth of knowledge with other homebrewers. It always seems to impress people.
Cheers,
Derek
February 28, 2013 at 9:34 pm
A thousand righteous deeds upon thee my good sir. I can attest to this working with a carboy. (Though I used a garbage bag) I absolutely could not believe how well this worked! A fellow novice enthusiast whom I showed this video to – before I attempted it – said it must be a trick. When they saw it, work, the look of unbelief was very cool.
Many multiple thank yous! 🙂
March 1, 2013 at 8:45 am
Of Course! I’m glad it worked!
October 21, 2015 at 11:37 am
This worked beautifully on a 6 gallon carboy. I didn’t even have to inflate the bag. The inside of the carboy and the stopper were wet and slippery and came right out with the bag. GENIUS!!! Thank You!
February 27, 2017 at 2:59 pm
Pretty cool method
January 2, 2021 at 5:56 pm
Thank you!! This really worked and I saved my favorite plastic cork screw!! Thanks for the tip!