As a regular drinker, I have a mild fascination with the size and measurements associated with alcoholic beverages. I still get into a firkin muddle with them and so to get some clarity (or should that be clarety?) on the subject, I will spend a bit of time explaining the many archaic terms and measurements.

Let’s start with the Gallon. In 1884 the British or Imperial gallon was standardised as the equivalent of ten pounds of water at 62 degrees Fahrenheit. This amounts to eight pints and there are four (surprise, surprise) quarts in a gallon, two pints in a quart and twenty Fluid Ounces in a pint. It wasn’t ever thus and there was a bewildering variety of standards for the gallon. The Winchester or corn gallon was 157 fluid ounces while the Old English Ale gallon was 162 fluid ounces. The Queen Anne Wine gallon was 133 fluid ounces while the Irish gallon was a measly 125 fluid ounces. You can see why they decided to standardise the measure. The question is why it took them so long.

The firkin takes its name from the Middle Dutch word vierdekijn which means a fourth or a quarter and this gives a clue to its size. When used in the context of Beer or ale, it denotes a quarter of a barrel. But it was not until 1824 that the amount of beer represented by an imperial beer or ale firkin was standardised. It represented 9 imperial gallons or 72 pints and most pubs to this day buy their beers in this quantity. From around the mid 15^th century an ale firkin was 8 gallons, moving up to 8.5 gallons in 1688 and settling at 9 gallons in 1803. The beer firkin was always 9 gallons until the adoption of the imperial gallon measurement.

Then we come to the pin or polypin. Real ale aficionados who are holding a party and are reluctant to settle for the modern-day equivalent of the Watney’s Red Barrel Party Seven – what fun we had trying to open those blighters in the seventies – will go to their local brewers or offie to secure a polypin of their favourite hooch. This is the equivalent in volume to half a firkin or 4.5 gallons or 36 pints – enough to lubricate the whistle.

The next measure we need to get our heads around is the kilderkin and this rather strange word again owes its origin to the Dutch. It means a small cask and in volume a kilderkin is the equivalent of two firkins or half a barrel – in other words, 144 pints. Until the adoption of the imperial measures, ale kilderkins and beer kilderkins reflected the differences in the quantity measured by their respective firkins. Beer festival organisers tend to order their stock in kilderkins in an attempt to ensure there is enough to go round. They often fail miserably in my experience.

The daddy of the beer measures is the barrel which, as you might have worked out by now, equates to 36 imperial gallons or 288 pints. To complete the set we have a tun which is the equivalent of six barrels or 216 imperial gallons, the butt which is half a tun and the hogshead which equates to a quarter of a tun or one and a half barrels or three kilderkins.

Phew! After all that it is surely time for a pint.

Filed under: Culture, History, Science Tagged: definition of a firkin, definition of a kilderkin, definition of a polypin, imperial gallon, volume of a beer barrel, volume of a butt, volume of a hogshead, volume of a tun, Watney's Red barrel Party Seven