Pic(k) of the Week: A cask's keystone should never look like this!

Would you want to drink a beer poured through this keystone? I wouldn't.

That green stuff is mold. Mold growing on beer residue left on the keystone of a firkin after that 10.8 gallon cask was sealed at a brewery. Mold insinuating itself into the wood (and maybe the beer). Should the brewery have done a (much) better job of cleaning the keystone? Uh, yes.

Should the pub have done a better job of cleaning the keystone upon receiving the cask? Uh, yes (although I suspect that no attempt was made).

At some point, the publican will be tapping that firkin through that keystone. So, I ask again. Would you really want to drink the beer poured through that bung? Not me!

I have left unmentioned the identities of the guilty brewery and pub in order to gently prod them toward better, more hygienic, practices. They know who they are.

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• Just to be clear, a firkin is the name for a particular size of cask, one that that contains 10.8 U.S. gallons (1,383.3 fluid ounces), or roughly 40.9 liters, which yields 86 U.S. 16-ounce pints (even though the last few would be quite 'sludgy'). In Imperial measurement, that's the same as 9 U.K. gallons. More on cask volumes: here.


• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of personal photos, usually posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always, with a good fermentable as a subject.
• Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.

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