Ok, I know there's a trick here somehow. I see all these pictures of nice jugs and carboys sitting there with some sparkling mead inside with a nice stopper and air lock crowning the crystalline scene.
Hmm, my first adventure was with a batch of JAOM in a gallon jug...I sanitized the stopper and it was push it in, watch it jump out, push it end, watch it...well, you get the point. I ended up rubber-banding the stopper down by hooking the rubber band under the finger hole...not elegant, but it worked.
My next adventure was with my 3-gallon batch of traditional. I started out using a regular drilled stopper...then one of the hollow-looking deals with a hole in it...I felt like I was watching a re-run of putting the stopper on the gallon of JAOM but in three times the size!!! I finally dug out one of those orange cover deals with the two holes in it...I'm not sure how tight it fit but it didn't jump off the mouth of the carboy! I ended up wrapping it with food wrapper. <sigh>
So...what's the trick? If you sanitize the stoppers they turn into a stump of a slippery eel and do the "watch me jump out and thoroughly hack you off" routine. So, what do you do? Do you sanitize it and let it dry off?...but, doesn't that give some wild yeast or bacteria a chance to infect the stopper? Do you put the stopper in and set a couple of cement blocks on top of it to hold it in? Or...does no one but me have this problem?
I've been meaning to post this for a while but kept procrastinating (something I'm good at). But, I'm getting ready to do a gallon of Joe's Quick Grape Mead and would like to have an idea of how to keep the stopper in the jug...without rubber bands.
Anybody got a tip on how to keep the stopper in? ???
Ed
Hmm, my first adventure was with a batch of JAOM in a gallon jug...I sanitized the stopper and it was push it in, watch it jump out, push it end, watch it...well, you get the point. I ended up rubber-banding the stopper down by hooking the rubber band under the finger hole...not elegant, but it worked.
My next adventure was with my 3-gallon batch of traditional. I started out using a regular drilled stopper...then one of the hollow-looking deals with a hole in it...I felt like I was watching a re-run of putting the stopper on the gallon of JAOM but in three times the size!!! I finally dug out one of those orange cover deals with the two holes in it...I'm not sure how tight it fit but it didn't jump off the mouth of the carboy! I ended up wrapping it with food wrapper. <sigh>
So...what's the trick? If you sanitize the stoppers they turn into a stump of a slippery eel and do the "watch me jump out and thoroughly hack you off" routine. So, what do you do? Do you sanitize it and let it dry off?...but, doesn't that give some wild yeast or bacteria a chance to infect the stopper? Do you put the stopper in and set a couple of cement blocks on top of it to hold it in? Or...does no one but me have this problem?
I've been meaning to post this for a while but kept procrastinating (something I'm good at). But, I'm getting ready to do a gallon of Joe's Quick Grape Mead and would like to have an idea of how to keep the stopper in the jug...without rubber bands.
Anybody got a tip on how to keep the stopper in? ???
Ed