A spile is a small

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

en or

metal A metal (from ancient Greek, Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, e ...

peg used to control the flow of air into, and

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is t ...

out of, a cask of

ale Ale is a type of beer brewed using a warm fermentation method, resulting in a sweet, full-bodied and fruity taste. Historically, the term referred to a drink brewed without hops. As with most beers, ale typically has a bittering agent to bala ...

. Spiles can also be used to broach

water Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as ...

from

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, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

Ale use

Cask ale is dispensed without the addition of externally supplied gas. That it is served "flat" with no bubbles at all is, however, a misconception. Properly conditioned cask ale will have enough dissolved carbon dioxide to produce bubbles of carbon dioxide. This has been generated by the natural action of the

yeast Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom. The first yeast originated hundreds of millions of years ago, and at least 1,500 species are currently recognized. They are estimated to constit ...

living in the beer while it is stored and transported. 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. When it is first delivered to the place where beer will be poured from it or where it will be connected to the beer engine, the cask is sealed. It has a keystone (where the tap will be driven in) and a shive (through which it was filled). Once it has been laid down in the location at which the beer is going to be dispensed, 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 – if it is hammered in when there is still a high internal pressure, it can be blown out again, with embarrassing consequences. To allow the loss of excess gas, soft spiles, 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 s ...

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, ...

, or harder wood with cuts in, are used. Once the 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 soft spiles). When beer is being drawn from the cask this 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 the 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 serving real ale have sufficient turnover for casks to be emptied while still at their best.

Other uses for spiles

Like many such older terms, the word spile has other local meanings. For example: * 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 cons ...

maple syrup Maple syrup is a 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. Maple tr ...

rubber tapping Rubber tapping is the process by which latex is collected from a rubber tree. The latex is harvested by slicing a groove into the bark of the tree at a depth of with a hooked knife and peeling back the bark. Trees must be approximately six years ...

, or palm wine from a toddy palm). * The 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 Spile is also 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. * A wooden stake or fence post.

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 (μm) in diameter. Capillaries are composed of only the tunica intima, consisting of a thin wall of simple squamous endothelial cells. They are the smallest blood vessels in the bod ...

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 spiles

In popular culture

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links