Description
These are the casks I helped to fill whilst working for a brief stint at the White Horse Brewery in Stanford-in-the-Vale, Oxfordshire. I helped out for two weeks and carried out the 'racking'. This is where you prepare the casks for filling and also fill them.
As a complete novice, I had no idea at all about any of the process of brewing apart from the key ingredients and that I am a big fan of the end product! I cleaned the casks on a special cask washer, put in the keystones (this is the plastic/rubber 'cork' type object at the top of the cask) attached labels, filled the casks with the (amazing smelling) beer and then whacked in the shive. The shive is the plastic/rubber plug that goes on the longer side of the cask. This will usually have a spile, a peg, knocked into it when in use at the pub!
I filled a fair few casks whilst I was there and learnt a lot from the brewer Alex. He spent the time to tell me about the brewing process, how to measure gravity and also looking at the different hops available. It was great to see the range they brewed at White Horse and I even got to have a little taste of the Sputnik 2! A limited run of their Luna type brand - delicious!