If you have another stopper, use it and leave that one down there until you
rack the next time. It will do no harm. I think most of us have had this
happen. Sounds like you really need to use the next size larger stopper
anyway.

If you do not have an extra stopper, then you will have to rack and get it
out. To get it out I turn the carboy upside down and jiggle it until I get
the stopper to fall into the neck with the small end pointing out. Then I
run a wire hook made from a cloths through the hole and pull it out.

Then get some extra stoppers in various sizes. They are not expensive and
ultimately you can not have too many.

Ray

"Mememe" > wrote in message
news:L0hlf.56255$Gd6.47733@pd7tw3no...
> Okay, this is the first batch ever, and we're very stupid, but learning
> quickly. (Please forgive us if this has been answered before.)
>
> We must have filled the carboy too full last night (we were transferring
> the wine from the primary fermenter into the carboy for secondary
> fermenting) because the fermentation lock was full of wine this morning.
> So I thought I'd be able to just pop it out clean it up, resterilize it,
> and pop it back in. Nope--top came out of the stopper, stopper stuck in
> neck of carboy. Then we fooled around with it trying to unstick the
> stopper, and voila, the stopper went down instead of up, and is now lying
> motionless at the bottom of the carboy.
>
> Help! Now what?
>
> Do we have to syphon the wine back out into a new carboy, or do we just
> buy a new fermentation lock and let the sterilized rubber stopper lie at
> the bottom of the carboy until we syphon the wine out for the
> stabilization step?
>
> Any help/advice would be very much appreciated--I'm really dreading going
> back to our local wine-making store and having to confess my sins to the
> Nils Crane behind the till.
>
>
>