What the Firkin?!

Like Mardi Gras & Super Bowl Sunday, the Oktoberfest celebration in Munich is one of the world’s great parties.  Literally, tons upon tons of beer & food are served to tens of thousands of revelers every year for two weeks, this year starting on September 22nd.  The House will take its own part in this worldwide feast just 3 days before, on Wednesday, September 19^th.  To help us celebrate, we’ll be joined by Penn Brewery’s Pete Vicinski, who’ll pour Penn’s classic Oktoberfest lager from the first firkin ever tapped at House of 1000 Beers!

What’s a firkin?  It sounds like a dirty word, but it’s not.  A firkin is a barrel, denoting a measurement equal to 72 pints.  Specifically in the beer world, firkins are used to serve beers that are cask-conditioned.  Normally, kegged draft beers are often filtered of yeast & served with carbon dioxide (or nitrogen) forced into them, which gives them their head & fizz.  Instead of being force-carbonated, cask-conditioned beers are put inside a barrel with the yeast still actively working, fermenting the beer & creating natural carbonation in the process.  Think of when you get a beer that’s bottle-conditioned (the kind with the yeast at the bottom) vs. one that was force-carbed.  Cask-conditioning is, simplistically, bottle-conditioning writ large. 

Tapping a firkin is the most exciting part!  The firkin is placed on its side on the bar, the bartender holds the tap in hand by the firkin’s mouth, & with a mallet in the other hand, gives the tap a good whack or two to drive the tap into the firkin, usually shooting a few squirts of beer in the process!  (See the photo above)  A spile is placed in the top to release air, & the beer is poured by gravity right off the bar, like a picnic cooler – firkins are also called “gravity kegs”.  Because the yeast is still active, the beer is considered to still be “alive” & should be consumed within about 48 hours or risk spoilage.  The beer that comes from cask-conditioning is smooth & velvety in texture, with unique flavors produced by the still-active yeast.

So let us pull a pint for you this Wednesday as part of our Oktoberfest “pre-game”, & be part of a first for the House.  Prost!

Photo used from John Hoyston’s Beer Here blog