Emergency - blowout and no stopper!

[johnhardy]

I have a horrible (and more than slightly comic) situation at the moment. I brewed a 1.078 OG bad boy yesterday and it got to fermenting so actively in my Better Bottle that it blew the stopper and fermentation lock off the fermenter in my shoe closet. I looked EVERYWHERE, even inside all of the shoes and completely cleaned out the closet - and I simply can’t find the stopper. It seems to have been atomized in the “explosion”. I have no LHBS with the special BB stopper type and I have the following question:

How long can I let this thing open ferment before I have to worry about damage to the brew? I’m assuming 24 more hours is no problem as I suppose there is a nice layer of CO2 on top of the brew considering how actively it is fermenting - but can I go to 48 hours to when the fermentation has slowed to almost nothing?

Having to decide whether to cough up for express guaranteed delivery of that darn stopper.
Thanks
-John

[mppatriots]

I would throw some foil over the top of it to keep anything from dropping in there for the time being. Open fermenting is actually a real way of making beer but it typically results in an estery beer, see brewingtv as they cover the topic in one of the episodes.

I say keep looking, atomizing stoppers is actually quite rare in Texas, you just don’t have the correct atmosphere down there to support it. Now if you were in Oregon that would be a different matter.

Oh but if you do get crazy and do an overnight, then you might as well order a few other items so that you make the most of your overnight shipping rates.

[johnhardy]

Hehe - I know it hasn’t been atomized for real - just seems that way - simply cannot understand where the thing went! Unbelievable…

[paultuttle]

John, do you have anything hanging in that closet? If you haven’t already, check the pockets.

+1 to placing foil over the top. This is why I have like 7 bungs, 6 airlocks and the such.

[johnhardy]

It’s a tiny crawlspace - about 12 square feet and max height 5 feet sloping straight down to 6 inches…the mystery continues - at work now with uncovered bad boy bubbling away - will cover he thing with something or other tomorrow - when my new stopper hopefully arrives…

[johnhardy]

Found the stopper and fermentation lock - they landed inside an umbrella hanging at the top of the closet! - Of course found 5 minutes after the mailman arrived with my replacements… all’s well that ends well.