Stupid question regarding fermenting bucket

I have been fighting my Irish stout for the last week. The airlock never showed any activity and when I checked the gravity 4 days in it had only gone from a 50 down to a 30 and it has thus sat there for another 6 days. Yesterday I repitched and today I still see nothing going on, but I did not check the gravity. I decided to just rack it over to the secondary anyways, per the advice from my LHBS.
Anyways, here is my question. does the fermenting bucket (6.5 gallon) have a rubber seal on the inside of the lid?
I have a 6 gallon that I use for a wash bucket and I keep full of Starsan and I seen tonight as I was racking the stout to the carboy that the wash bucket had one but my fermenting bucket did not.
Not sure if my other one does or not and I'm not willing to open it to find out. The airlock is still going strong.

I was just thinking that if it should have one and it does not, that may be some of the problems I have been having with this batch.

Well I don't know what kind of bucket you have, but assuming it's a food grade bucket like the Ale Pail I have, no it doesn't have any type of seal under the lid.

pfranco81 said:

Well I don't know what kind of bucket you have, but assuming it's a food grade bucket like the Ale Pail I have, no it doesn't have any type of seal under the lid.

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yes it's an ale pail that came in my brewers best kit. The other one I got was to be a 7.9 gal. fermenting bucket from LD Carlson, but when it got here it was only a 6 gal but uses the 7.9 lid (very wide bucket) so I kept it because it works great for the Starsan, I can even put my other lids into it.
But I see that the new one has a black rubber O-ring and the other does not. I was just thinking that if I was not getting a seal then maybe that's why the airlock never bubbled and the fermenting stopped so fast.

well my ~6 gallon Ale Pail has no ring and is bubbling non stop

Some have a glued in type bead of "seal" in the lid ring, but most do not. Hit and miss whether you will have an air tight seal or not. No worries if you don't.

Hydromoter is the best way to tell if your beer is down to it FG or not.

Denny's Evil Concoctions said:

Some have a glued in type bead of "seal" in the lid ring, but most do not. Hand miss whether you will have an air tight seal or not. No worries if you don't.

Hydromoter is the best way to tell if your beer is down to it FG or not.

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Ok thanks all, I'm just not going to worry about it.