A spile (sometimes called a "cask peg") is a

wood Wood is a structural tissue/material found as xylem in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulosic fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin t ...

en or

metal A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...

peg used to control the flow of air into, and

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

out of, a

cask A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids ...

ale Ale is a style of beer, brewed using a warm fermentation method. In medieval England, the term referred to a drink brewed without hops. As with most beers, ale typically has a bittering agent to balance the malt and act as a preservative. Ale ...

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

. Spiles can also be used to broach liquids (like

maple syrup Maple syrup is a sweet syrup made from the sap of maple trees. In cold climates, these trees store starch in their trunks and roots before winter; the starch is then converted to sugar that rises in the sap in late winter and early spring. Ma ...

) from a

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, e.g., including only woody plants with secondary growth, only ...

Ale use

Cask ale Real ale is the name coined by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) for ale that is "brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous ca ...

is dispensed without the addition of externally supplied gas. Properly conditioned cask ale will have enough dissolved carbon dioxide (produced by yeast) to have bubbles. In fact, the yeast can produce more carbon dioxide than is required, and it is for this reason that the cask is vented through the hole in the

shive {{Refimprove, date=November 2009 A shive is a wooden or plastic fitting used in ale casks. It is found on the curved side of the cask, arranged so that when the cask is on its side and the keystone is at the lowest part of the rim, the shive ...

. The cask is sealed when it is first connected to a

beer engine A beer engine is a device for pumping beer from a cask, usually located in a pub's cellar. The beer engine was invented by John Lofting, a Dutch inventor, merchant and manufacturer who moved from Amsterdam to London in about 1688 and patented a ...

. It has a keystone (where the

beer tap A beer tap is a valve, specifically a tap, for controlling the release of beer. While other kinds of tap may be called ''faucet'', ''valve'' or ''spigot'', the use of ''tap'' for beer is almost universal. The word was originally coined for the ...

will be driven in) and a shive (through which it was filled). Once it has been laid down for dispensing, a venting punch is used to pierce the shive, which is either partially pre-drilled or has a hardwood tutt sealing the completely drilled hole. This breaks the seal, and the tap can then be driven into the keystone. To allow the loss of excess gas, a soft spile (made of open-grained

softwood Scots pine, a typical and well-known softwood Softwood is wood from gymnosperm trees such as conifers. The term is opposed to hardwood, which is the wood from angiosperm trees. The main differences between hardwoods and softwoods is that the sof ...

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial plant, perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily (biology), subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in th ...

, or harder wood with cuts in) is used. Once a cellarman judges this process to be complete, a hard spile is inserted which does not allow any more gas out. These are made of harder wood (usually still technically "softwood", but denser and more solid than a soft spile). When beer is being drawn from the cask a hard spile is removed and can be replaced by a soft spile, or left open. When no beer is being dispensed a hard spile is put back in. Plastic spiles are also available. Once a spile is reinserted, enough gas will be generated by the yeast to replace the volume of gas that will have come out of solution. But the amount of carbon dioxide that can be produced is limited, so a hard spile is kept in as much as possible. This is one of the reasons for real ale's short shelf-life once a cask is opened – if too much carbon dioxide is lost, the beer will become flat. Typically, the beer will be good only for two to four days; this short shelf life is why it is important that a

pub A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the late 17th century, to differentiate private ho ...

serving real ale have sufficient turnover for casks to be emptied while still at their best.

Other uses for term

Like many such older terms, the word spile has other local meanings. For example: * A wooden stake or

fence A fence is a structure that encloses an area, typically outdoors, and is usually constructed from posts that are connected by boards, wire, rails or net (textile), netting. A fence differs from a wall in not having a solid foundation along its ...

post. * A tapper, an implement used to tap any sort of tree (e.g., for

birch sap Birch sap, birch water or birch juice is the sap directly tapped from birch trees, '' Betula pubescens'' (white birch), ''Betula pendula'' (silver birch), '' Betula lenta'', '' Betula papyrifera'', and '' Betula fontinalis''. Birch sap may be c ...

, rubber tapping, or

palm wine Palm wine, known by several #Names, local names, is an alcoholic beverage created from the sap of various species of palm trees such as the Borassus, palmyra, date palms, and coconut palms. It is known by various names in different regions and ...

from a toddy palm). ** An iron or wood spigot driven into a sugar maple to produce

. * At Indian Harbour in Nova Scotia, the shores on which fish processing "stores" were located were called spiles. * A term used in boatbuilding to describe the means/actions which a builder uses to determine the shape of any curved piece needing to be fitted to a curved surface.

In popular culture

A spile is utilized to obtain water in the novel '' Catching Fire'' (2009) and subsequent film '' The Hunger Games: Catching Fire'' (2013). The spile consists of a tube with one end sharpened and the other split. When pounded into a tree, a stream of fresh water flows from the tube. Most of the year, this is not consistent with the nature of trees, as water diffuses upward through very tiny

capillary A capillary is a small blood vessel, from 5 to 10 micrometres in diameter, and is part of the microcirculation system. Capillaries are microvessels and the smallest blood vessels in the body. They are composed of only the tunica intima (the inn ...

passages. When a tree is cut down, water does not flow out of the cut surface. The technique used in the movie would only work in early spring or late winter, when the watery sap runs high in the trees. The taps that are placed in maple trees are placed into drilled holes and the resultant fluid is sap, not water.

Ale use

Other uses for term

In popular culture

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links