Bring Us a Barrel

‘Bring Us a Barrel’ was the first song Keith Marsden wrote. The first time him and Brian Senior (who sang with Keith in the duo 'New Heritage') performed it, in 1965, they passed it off as being traditional and said that they had collected it from some old singer in Reading. In the early 1960s it was deemed unacceptable to admit that you’d penned the song in a traditional style yourself. Keith had to do some research into the sizes of beer barrels during his work at the Midland Bank and it germinated into the song.

When Keith wrote the song all ales and porter was delivered to the public houses in wooden, traditionally oak, containers bound with steel hoops, called barrels. A barrel is also an actual imperial unit of volume of liquid of 36 gallons, there were other sizes some bigger, some smaller.

The largest one was the Tun (216 galls) and in descending order, the Butt (108galls), the Puncheon (72 galls) the Hogshead (54 galls), the Barrell (36 galls), the Kilderkin (18 galls), the Firkin (9 galls) and the smallest one was the Pin (4.5 galls).

Nowadays the most common size used in the brewing trade is the Firkin followed by the Kilderkin. Small barrels are used now to avoid wastage, and for ease of handling by the draymen.