Glossary · Equipment
Hogshead
Definition
A cask size long used for cider. Cask sizes were never fully standardised across trades and regions, and a cider hogshead was not necessarily the same volume as a beer or wine one.
- Subject
- Equipment
In more detail
Historic cask nomenclature is a genuine trap. The same word denotes different capacities in different trades, counties and centuries, and old production or wage figures quoted in hogsheads cannot be converted to litres without knowing which measure the writer meant. Where CiderHQ quotes a historic volume it names the source rather than converting silently.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Equipment
Cask
A wooden vessel of staves bound by hoops, bulging at the middle so it can be rolled and turned. Casks both store cider and shape it, admitting a slow ingress of oxygen through the wood.
Equipment
Butt
One of the largest traditional cask sizes, conventionally twice a hogshead. As with all historic cask names, the capacity varied by trade and period.
Equipment
Pipe
A large elongated cask, associated chiefly with the fortified wine trade and used in cider houses that acquired their vessels second-hand from it.
Equipment
Firkin
A small cask, conventionally a quarter of a barrel and nine imperial gallons in the British beer trade. Firkins and pins are the sizes in which traditional draught cider commonly reaches a bar.
Equipment
Kilderkin
A cask of half a barrel — eighteen imperial gallons in the British beer trade — between a firkin and a barrel in size.
History
Truck system
The practice of paying farm labourers partly in cider rather than wholly in money. It was widespread in the West Country and the three counties and was progressively outlawed by the Truck Acts of the nineteenth century.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Hereford Museum of Cider collections and interpretation
Hereford Cider Museum Trust · museum · retrieved 2026-08-24
Somerset Rural Life Museum — cider collections
South West Heritage Trust · museum · retrieved 2026-08-24