Barrel

A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They were originally made of wooden staves and bound by wood or metal hoops. A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They were originally made of wooden staves and bound by wood or metal hoops. Traditionally, the barrel was also a standard size of measure referring to a set capacity or weight of a given commodity. For example, in the UK a barrel of beer refers to a quantity of 36 imperial gallons (160 L; 43 US gal). Wine was shipped in barrels of 119 litres (31 US gal; 26 imp gal). Barrel has also come into use as a generic term for a wooden cask of any size. Modern wooden barrels for wine-making are either made of French common oak (Quercus robur) and white oak (Quercus petraea) or from American white oak (Quercus alba) and typically have standard sizes: 'Bordeaux type' 225 litres (59 US gal; 49 imp gal), 'Burgundy type' 228 litres (60 US gal; 50 imp gal) and 'Cognac type' 300 litres (79 US gal; 66 imp gal). Modern barrels and casks can also be made of aluminum, stainless steel, and different types of plastic, such as HDPE. Someone who makes barrels is called a 'barrel maker' or cooper. Barrels are only one type of cooperage. Other types include, but are not limited to, the making of buckets, vats, tubs, butter churns, hogsheads, firkins, kegs, kilderkins, tierces, rundlets, puncheons, pipes, tuns, butts, pins, troughs and breakers. Barrels have a variety of uses, including storage of liquids such as water and oil, fermenting wine, arrack, and sake, and maturing beverages such as wine, cognac, armagnac, sherry, port, whiskey, and beer. Other commodities once stored in wooden casks include gunpowder, meat, fish, paint, nails and tallow. Early casks were bound with wooden hoops and in the 19th century these were gradually replaced by metal hoops that were stronger, more durable and took up less space. The term barrel can also refer to roughly cylindrical containers made of modern materials like plastic or steel. An Egyptian wall-painting in the tomb of Hesy-Ra, dating to 2600 BC, shows a wooden tub made of staves, bound together with wooden hoops, and used to measure corn. Another Egyptian tomb painting dating to 1900 BC shows a cooper and tubs made of staves in use at the grape harvest. Palm-wood casks were also reported in use in ancient Babylon. In Europe, buckets and casks dating to 200 BC have been found preserved in the mud of lake villages. A lake village near Glastonbury dating to the late Iron Age has yielded one complete tub and a number of wooden staves. The Roman historian Pliny the Elder reports that cooperage in Europe originated with the Gauls in Alpine villages where they stored their beverages in wooden casks bound with hoops. Pliny identified three different types of coopers: ordinary coopers, wine coopers and coopers who made large casks. Large casks contained staves that were larger and more numerous and were corresponding more difficulty to assemble. Roman coopers tended to be independent tradesmen, passing their skills on to their sons. The Greek geographer Strabo records wooden pithoi were lined with pitch to stop leakage and preserve the wine. Barrels were sometimes used for military purposes. Julius Caesar used barrels of tar to start a fire in a town under siege. Empty barrels were sometimes used to make pontoon bridges to cross rivers. Empty casks were used to line the walls of shallow wells from at least Roman times. Such casks were found in 1897 during archaeological excavation in Britain of Roman Silchester. They were made of Pyrenean silver fir and the staves were one and a half inches thick and featured grooves where the heads fitted. They had Roman numerals scratched on the surface of each stave to help with reassembly.