Glossary of Terms

Adjuncts - Anything that is added to the wort other than fermentable barley malt, in order to achieve the desired flavour.

Archers - Strange BBC wireless program that is allegedly a 'true to life story of country folk.'

Brew length - The ultimate quantity of beer produced from each gyle.

 Bung - Fit the bung to the cask to seal it up. This is a gentle and subtle procedure using a large mallet. It's this that the tap is knocked through to dispense the beer.

Burtonise - To treat the water with additives so that its content is similar to that of Burton-on-Trent, allegedly the world's best water for brewing bitter beer.

Copper - Also called the kettle. This is the third vessel used in the process. It is the vessel in which the wort is boiled and where the hops are added.

Doughing in (or mashing in) - Initial stage of the brewing process when grist and liquor are first mixed together.

Fermenter - The large vessel in which the wort receives its yeast and the fermenting process begins.

Firkin - 9-gallon cask. Quarter of a brewers barrel.

Goods - The porridge-like mix of grist and hot liquor.

Gravity - As in 'specific gravity' - O.G. (original gravity) being a measurement of the density of the unfermented wort which determines the amount of fermentable sugars in the wort and therefore the strength of the eventual brew.

Gyle - Batch - The term for each separate brew.

Grist - The mixture of crushed barley malt and any adjuncts that is added to the mash tun.

Grist Mill - At Battledown we crush our own malt, we believe it gives us more control and a better flavour to the beers. (Origin of the saying 'It's all grist to the mill'). Our mill is a relic that we love and cherish.

Hot liquor tun - The first brewing vessel. The one in which the untreated, cold water is heated and treated.

Kettle - See 'Copper.'

Kilderkin - 18-gallon cask. Half of a brewers barrel

Liquor - Water, or more correctly the water that we use for brewing, not necessarily the same thing.

Mash tun - The second large brewing vessel, where the liquor and the grist first meet.

Pin - 4.5 gallon cask. One eighth of a brewers barrel.

Pitched - Adding yeast, as in ..'At this point the yeast is pitched.'

Polypin - A bag in a box container of beer usually 36 pints (4.5 gallons). A polythene pin - get it?

Prime - Adding a small amount of fermentables, or sugars to the beer before it is racked, to help with the secondary fermentation in the cask, thus naturally carbonating the ale.

Rack (verb)- To fill the casks.

Runnings - The mixture of water and dissolved malt that comes out of the mash tun.

Shive - This is the stopper for the larger hole in the cask, though which it is filled. The middle of this is the 'Tut'

Sparge - To sprinkle hot liquor onto the grain bed to extract as much malt as possible from the goods.

Spile - A piece of wood 9 (or plastic these days) that is used to knock the tut through the shive and into the cask in order to start the venting process.

Steeped - Oh come on, you know that one don't you!

Strike temperature - The temperature that the liquor is heated to immediately before doughing in.

Trub - The residue of hops, unwanted protein and phenolic material left in the copper after the wort has been removed, or to be more basic, the crap that you don't want in your beer. 

Tut - The centre part of the shive that is knocked into the cask by the spile in order to vent the beer.

Tun - Large brewing vessel.

Wort - Unfermented beer.