Hogshead

A hogshead (abbreviated "hhd", plural "hhds") is a large cask of liquid (or, less often, of a food commodity). More specifically, it refers to a specified volume, measured in either imperial or US customary measures, primarily applied to alcoholic beverages, such as wine, ale, or cider.

Etymology


English philologist Walter William Skeat (1835–1912) noted the origin is to be found in the name for a cask or liquid measure appearing in various forms in Germanic languages, in Dutch oxhooft (modern okshoofd), Danish oxehoved, Old Swedish oxhuvud, etc. The Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 conjectured that the word should therefore be "oxhead", "hogshead" being a mere corruption.

Varieties and standardisation
A tobacco hogshead was used in British and American colonial times to transport and store tobacco. It was a very large wooden barrel. A standardized hogshead measured 48 in long and 30 in in diameter at the head (at least 550 L, depending on the width in the middle). Fully packed with tobacco, it weighed about 1000 lb.

A  hogshead in Britain contains about 300 L.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that the hogshead was first standardized by an act of Parliament (2 Hen. 6. c. 14) in 1423, though the standards continued to vary by locality and content. For example, the OED cites an 1897 edition of Whitaker's Almanack, which specified the gallons of wine in a hogshead varying most particularly across fortified wines: claret/Madeira 46 impgal, port 57 impgal, sherry 54 impgal. The American Heritage Dictionary claims that a hogshead can consist of anything from (presumably) 62.5 to 140 USgal. A hogshead of Madeira wine was approximately equal to 45–48 gallons (0.205–0.218 m3). A hogshead of brandy was approximately equal to 56–61 gallons (0.255–0.277) m3.

Eventually, a hogshead of wine came to be 63 USgal, while a hogshead of beer or ale is 54 gallons (250 L if old beer/ale gallons, 245 L if imperial).

A hogshead was also used as unit of measurement for sugar in Louisiana for most of the 19th century. Plantations were listed in sugar schedules by the number of hogsheads of sugar or molasses produced. Used for sugar in the 18th and 19th centuries in the British West Indies, a hogshead weighed on average 16 cwt / 812kg. A hogshead was also used for the measurement of herring fished for sardines in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick and Cornwall.