LOGSTASH event pipeline stops on Graphite output plug-in exception

Logstash event ingestion pipeline can fail with the following exception:
...
Exception in thread "LogStash::Runner" org.jruby.exceptions.RaiseException: (IOError) Connection timed out
at org.jruby.RubyIO.write(org/jruby/RubyIO.java:1408)
at org.jruby.RubyIO.write(org/jruby/RubyIO.java:2452)
at org.jruby.RubyIO.puts(org/jruby/RubyIO.java:2342)
at LogStash::Outputs::Graphite.receive(file:/eikon/monitoring/app/logstash/logstash-1.3.3-flatjar.jar!/logstash/outputs/graphite.rb:132)
at LogStash::Outputs::Base.handle(file:/eikon/monitoring/app/logstash/logstash-1.3.3-flatjar.jar!/logstash/outputs/base.rb:86)
at RUBY.initialize((eval):930)
at org.jruby.RubyProc.call(org/jruby/RubyProc.java:271)
at LogStash:ipeline.output(file:/eikon/monitoring/app/logstash/logstash-1.3.3-flatjar.jar!/logstash/pipeline.rb:259)
at RUBY.outputworker(file:/eikon/monitoring/app/logstash/logstash-1.3.3-flatjar.jar!/logstash/pipeline.rb:218)
at RUBY.start_outputs(file:/eikon/monitoring/app/logstash/logstash-1.3.3-flatjar.jar!/logstash/pipeline.rb:145)
...
The BAU processing stops functioning. In my case, events are not pushed to RabbitMQ. A re-start solves it.