For most people a barrel is just a container of liquid. Think beer barrel, wine barrel – rain butt! Yes the rain butt could be called a barrel as it contains liquid. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the earliest known use of the term is in the middle English period (1150 – 1500), more specifically a borrowing from French around 1300. Whatever the evidence for its appearance in English, the physical form of a cylindrical wooden vessel, generally bulging in the middle and of greater length than breadth, formed of curved staves bound together by hoops, and having flat ends or heads was probably invented by the Celts although the ancient Egyptians are said to have had a similar vessel.
The earliest known example of cooperage in Britain is the remains of stave built tubs dating from mid- 2nd Millennium BC. in various digs. Pliny the Elder (AD 23/24 to 79) wrote that the Gauls stored their wine in “wooden containers that were held together with metal hoops. The Romans experienced these “cupae” as weapons filled with tallow, pitch and dried wood, and fired in the siege of Uxellodunum (51 B.C.). Deriving from the celtic word cupae, is cooper, a person who makes casks (barrels). The Romans adopted the technology, which is more robust and lighter than amphorae and ceramic vessels. Until quite recently, these wooden containers were used to store and transport solids and liquids of all kinds.
These coopered containers were used as a measure of capacity both for liquids and dry goods, the container defined as a cask and the barrel as a volume varying with the commodity.
As early as 1503 a barrel of soap was 30 gallons. A barrel of ale 32. gallons and a barrel of beer 36 gallons. In 19th century England the barrel defined volumes of apples, beef, wine, candles, nuts, raisins and vinegar etc. In fact, the barrel became a defined (although different) volume for multiple commodities to be transported in containers, now known colloquially as barrels but which ought to be “casks”.
The barrel became more specific with John Richardson’s late 18th century invention of fermentable extract measured in pounds per barrel. At this time a barrel of beer was a standard volume of 36 gallons. Richardson measured the weight of a half barrel of water and compared it to the increased weight of the same volume of wort. The sugar in the wort increased the weight over water by so many pounds. The method was standardised to the barrel of 36 gallons giving a weight above water of the same volume of so many pounds, or pounds per barrel. This first standardised measure of the strength of beer, or more accurately the fermentable extract, became the adopted method of charging excise duty in 1880. Pounds per barrel is directly translatable into modern specific gravity see https://tdo-beer.com/index.php/pounds-barrel-to-specific-gravity/
Having disconnected barrel from cask, which of the containers in the above image are barrels? None!! The wooden coopered casks are around 200 litres and the stainless steel casks are firkins of 9 gallons. I have been asked many times to send a barrel of beer when the landlord meant a standard firkin – a quarter of a barrel. Britain is still using the old measures based on the gallon. We were allowed to retain the pint by the EU before Brexit and so the imperial gallon and cask sizes of pin, firkin, kilderkin, barrel, hogshead, butt and tun remained as reminders of an ancient volumes system. The butt and tun are effectively obsolete Beyond the barrel and increasingly the firkin, the larger sizes or becoming obsolete as pubs opt for smaller volumes. The metric system is the more logical but there is nothing to replace the deeply cultural icon of the Pint. As long as we have this the cask sizes will endure.
There is nothing more confusing than multiple measurement systems. I convert everything to the metric system in my recipes. That such an easy system to work with has not become standard in the modern age is baffling. I often use American websites for inspiration but translating from pounds, Fahrenheit and the Queen Anne wine gallon is particularly onerous. Yes, the gallon has had multiple definitions over the ages – but that is a subject for another blog.
Beer Cask sizes in Gallons
pin = 4.5
firkin = 9
kilderkin = 18
barrel = 36
hogshead = 54
butt = 108
tun = 216
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