Glossary · Equipment
Shive
Definition
The wooden or plastic plug driven into the bung hole on the belly of a cask, carrying a smaller central section through which a spile can be pushed to vent gas.
- Subject
- Equipment
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Equipment
Keystone
The small plug set into the end of a cask, through which a tap is driven when the cask is put on to serve.
Equipment
Spile
A small peg driven into the shive to control the escape of carbon dioxide from a cask. A porous soft spile lets gas vent; a hard spile seals the cask to retain condition.
Equipment
Bung
The stopper closing the filling hole of a cask or vat. During fermentation it is left loose or replaced by an airlock; afterwards it is driven home to exclude air.
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.
Serving
Gravity dispense
Serving cider from a tap in the cask or box by gravity alone, without pump or applied gas. It is the traditional method for still farmhouse cider and the standard at cider festivals.
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.
CAMRA cider and perry standards
Campaign for Real Ale · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Opened on 2026-08-24. Registered for the consumer-campaigning vocabulary — "real cider", "full juice" — which is advocacy language rather than legal definition, and is recorded as such wherever CiderHQ uses it.