stopper on carboy

yea i know i have posted about a thousand times this week but i was just about to rack to my secondary fermentor and i just realized the stopper does not fit that will. it is a glass carboy with a number 7 stopper. is there a way to make it tighter, such as just pounding on it? because i heard u want to have the airlock in place when u put the lid on and i cant really pound the stopper like that.

If you pound on it you might end up with another frequent thread:
"My stopper is inside my carboy! Help!!!"

Put the airlock on first and just press it in firmly. If never seats well, you may want to look into getting some carboy caps.

Pound the stopper? Woah! I've never had to pound my stoppers in. I just push them on, firmly. The air lock will let the gas out just fine, or it should. Your stopper is simply to hold the air lock or blow off tube and to make a form fitting seal. But if you go to pounding it in, you just might have a heck of a time trying to get it back out!
I do know that there are different sizes for the glass carboys vs the plastic carboys. my LHBS was able to tell me what size I needed (my carboys are plastic).
There was a difference in that the plasic carboys have a bigger opening than the glass ones, and the lady that runs the place was able to sell me the right one. Which was a #10.

But in anycase, you are not trying to seal the carboy like you would a beer bottle with a capper! You simply want to make a firm seal with the air lock.

You notice there has been a lot of problems with #7s lately? I have a mess of stoppers, but have universally used my universal (sorry for the pun).

FWIW, I use 6 1/2 stoppers for my 6-gal carboy and growlers. So far no problems with keeping a good seal

skifast1 said:

FWIW, I use 6 1/2 stoppers for my 6-gal carboy and growlers. So far no problems with keeping a good seal

Click to expand...

Me too.

I recently switched to carboy caps, and won't go back to stoppers.

I had a similar problem with a carboy I picked up on ebay. It came with a smaller stopper already in it. When I tried to use my autosyphon it wouldn't fit. I ended up sticking the racking tube from it in and sucking.

Are you putting the stopper in when the inside of the lid is wet? This is common especially after siphoning the beer into the secondary. If so, the stopper will not stay in, but will keep popping back out. You'll have to wait for it to dry (or dry it somehow) in order for it to stay in place.

I had problems with the number 7 as well, I switched over to the universal one's and no more problems.

Heh, you have a 6.5 gallon carboy and a 5 gallon secondary dont you? That is what happened to me... I went to the LHBS to buy my seconday and went home all fat, dumb and happy... then I realized that my stopper wouldnt fit in the 5 gal at allllll.

Brewpilot

Primary: Empty
Secondary: Razzle Dazzle Raspberry
Bottle: (2) Polish Wheat

If you use star-san to sanitize the carboy or stopper, it acts as a wetting agent and prevents a good seal between the carboy and stopper unless they are both dry. I usually use Iodophor on both the carboy and stopper, and have no problems.

-a.