Glossary
Venting
Releasing excess carbon dioxide from a cask by driving a porous wooden peg — a soft spile — into the shive, then sealing with a non-porous hard spile once the beer has settled to the right condition.
Also called spiling, soft spile, hard spile, shive, keystone.
A cask arrives with more condition than it should be served at, because fermentation continued after it left the brewery. The soft spile lets the excess escape gradually; the cellarman judges by the hiss and by tasting when the beer has reached the right level, then replaces it with a hard spile to hold the remaining condition.
The shive is the bung in the cask’s side that the spile goes through; the keystone is the bung in the end that the tap is driven through.
Related
- Cellar conditioning — The wider process.
- Cask — What is being vented.
More vocabulary
Beer-clean glass · Brewer’s barrel · Cask · Cellar conditioning · Crowler · Draught · Firkin · Growler · Imperial pint · Keg
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.