08/03/2024
THE HOGSHEAD
Octaves, firkins, barrels, butts, pipes and many more casks are used in whisky maturation, with barrels and butts being very common. But hogsheads are quite common too. What are they and why are they used?
THE NAME
There are two theories on where the name hogshead comes from:
1. They were used to transport hogs – this seems apocryphal, who puts a pig in a cask?
2. It’s a corruption of ‘oxhead’ and in the days before literacy was common the casks were branded with an ox head for recognition – this seems more likely, particularly with a Cockney dropping of ‘H’ to ‘ogs-ead’, but the truth may be lost to history.
THE SIZE
The hogshead is not new, it’s have been around since at least 1423 when it was standardised by an act of Parliament in Britain. ‘Standardised’ is a challenging term here, because in those days there were different gallons for different products and there were regional variations as well. Wild times until the introduction of consistent imperial measures in 1824, when a hogshead was standardised to 52.5 imperial gallons (238.7 litres).
This was half the size of a butt at 105 gallons (477.3 litres) and twice the size of a barrel at 26.25 gallons (119.3 litres). That’s obviously very different to the more familiar American Standard Barrel (ASB) typically used for Bourbon, which is around 190 to 200 litres. More correctly it’s around 53 gallons, though it should be noted that US gallon is different to a UK gallon.
Today, hogsheads are usually between 225 and 250 litres. The midpoint here is 237.5 litres, meaning a hogshead is about 20% larger than an ASB, and almost exactly the same size it was back in 1824.
PRODUCTION
Here’s where hogsheads get interesting. It’s exceptionally rare for a modern cooperage to make a hogshead from scratch. Butts and ASBs are very common but hogsheads are a bit of a Frankenstein cask. Rather than being made from scratch, they are usually recycled from ASBs. Depending on the cooperage and end user, a hogshead is made by either:
1. Taking the staves from five ASBs and assembling them into four hogsheads, or
2. Taking the staves from four ASBs and assembling them into three hogsheads
Turned on their end, hogsheads are therefore the same height as an ASB, but they have a greater diameter to hold the 20% greater volume.
ECONOMICS
So why would you go to all the trouble of dismantling a barrel, sorting the staves, and then making new iron hoops and oak cask heads to fit these larger hogsheads? That’s additional time and cost in a famously frugal industry.
Looking back to the early 1900s, labour was cheap and international shipping was expensive in comparison to today. Rather than shipping barrels full of air which would take a lot of space on ships, they would use cheap labour to break down the barrels, pack the staves more efficiently without all the space, then use more cheap labour to reassemble them at the destination. Once this is considered, the cost of new hoops and cask ends are a much smaller part of the equation.
PRACTICALITIES
Hoops and heads being a smaller part of the equation does not remove them from the equation entirely, there must still be some good reasons for reconstruction into hogsheads. While there are no definitive answers given by anyone in the industry, there are a few arguments that have been put forward.
1. Surface area to volume ratio
Being larger, a hogshead has less surface area relative to volume, meaning slower interaction between spirit and wood. While not always desired (smaller octaves, quartercasks and ASBs are also used extensively), slower maturation is sometimes desired, particularly in cool climates. Slower maturation allows for secondary esterification and other flavour development that only happens over long periods, without introducing too many woody or tannic notes.
For (far) more detail on surface area to volume ratios in whisky casks, please see my article “SA:Ve Me!” on Whisky Molecules.
2. Warehousing
Hogsheads have long been common in the UK having been around since 1423. When ASBs first became widely available, it would have been beneficial to covert them to same, or similar size as your existing hogsheads. They would have stacked better with existing casks in dunnage warehouses, and the common sizing would have carried over when racked warehousing became popular. Further to this, within reason, a smaller number of larger casks makes for better space efficiency, easier handling and reduced units for stock management.
3. Embedded forms
While master distillers or blenders don’t necessarily follow an exact recipe when they create a batch of their flagship 12YO year old, for example, they usually start with guidelines. Those guidelines may be something like “12 first fill bourbon barrels, 20 refill bourbon barrels, 20 bourbon hogsheads, 15 sherry butts’. They put that together and nose for consistency with previous batches, then make adjustments if required. In planning for that SKU in the future, they’ll be laying down hogsheads today so they can keep creating the same flavour and aroma profile in 12 years. In other words, the use of hogsheads is already embedded in their planning, and those patterns don’t change without significant pressure. They could do it without the hogsheads if they had to, but it would take a lot more work to rebuild the form.
TRADITION AND ECONOMICS
Today, with comparatively cheap shipping and expensive labour, it seems strange that the economics of a hogshead would still stack up. But as much as whisky makers seek efficiency, they are slow to abandon long held traditions. The economic case must be very strong to force the abandonment of long observed practices and embedded planning.
Additionally, the surface area to volume and warehousing considerations remain true. Hogsheads on their end are the same height as ASBs, which means they also work well alongside ASBs in modern palletised warehouses where casks are stored on their ends rather than sides. This further reduces any incentives to make changes.
And finally, while the unit cost of labour may have increased in relative terms so has labour productivity with modern tools and practices, and we are again seeing a surge in shipping prices due to fuel costs and international conflict.
Unless something changes radically, hogsheads will be in use for many more years.
