Sunday 21 July 2013

UK hopping rates 1914 - 1939

I told you I had more hop numbers. I just had to rummage around in the nether regions of my spreadsheets to find them.

The title is pretty self-explanatory.  I've taken the figures I have for beer production and hop usage, nailed them loosely together and calculated the average quantity of hops used per barrel of beer produced. And I've thrown in the OG and ounces of hops per gravity point so the effect of gravity changes can be removed.

I think it's a pretty nifty table. Especially as it tells me something unexpected. Or rather confirms soemthing I was reluctant to believe. Remember those hop numbers from Barth Reports? There was  one set that showed average hopping rates for various countries. I was sceptical of the UK ones, because it showed the hopping rate after WW I as higher than before it. That couldn't possibly be true, could it? Average OG had declined abourt 25% so logic would demand that the hopping rate had undergone a similar fall. Not true at all.

What makes that increase in hopping even  more surprising, is that the price of hops had more than quadruples between 1914 and 1920:


Price of English hops per cwt.
£ s. d.
1914 4 3 9
1916 6 14 0
1918 18 15 0
1920 19 10 0
Source:
Brewers' Almanack 1955, page 63.

Here's another way of looking at it:


Fall in OG and hopping 1914 - 1920
1914 1920 % fall
Average OG 1052.15 1039.41 24.43%
Average hops per barrel 1.73 1.62 6.36%
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1928, p. 110
1914: 1953 Brewers' Almanack 1955, page 62

OG fell 24% but the hopping rate only by 6.%. I'd like to explain it, but have absolutely no idea why this happened.

Surprisingly, the hopping rate per gravity point stayed at close to the 1914 level for most of the 1930's. Not at all what I would have expected.

Here's the full table:


UK hopping rates 1914 - 1939
year bulk barrels hops lbs hops per barrel Average OG oz. hops per gravity point
1914 36,162,273 559,423 1.73 1052.15 0.53
1920 34,776,258 503,140 1.62 1039.41 0.66
1922 27,815,249 398,506 1.60 1042.88 0.60
1924 25,927,783 350,428 1.51 1043.04 0.56
1926 25,987,830 355,375 1.53 1043.23 0.57
1928 24,981,731 330,662 1.48 1043.17 0.55
1930 24,488,629 307,289 1.41 1042.90 0.52
1931 22,561,497 277,406 1.38 1042.50 0.52
1932 18,864,711 219,587 1.30 1041.04 0.51
1933 18,931,185 222,868 1.32 1039.52 0.53
1934 20,378,879 233,419 1.28 1040.99 0.50
1935 21,598,179 248,744 1.29 1041.06 0.50
1936 22,207,859 258,300 1.30 1041.02 0.51
1937 23,608,658 270,592 1.28 1041.10 0.50
1938 24,339,360 277,846 1.28 1041.02 0.50
1939 25,691,217 285,715 1.25 1040.93 0.49
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1928, p. 110
Brewers' Almanack 1955, p. 50
Brewers' Almanack 1955, page 62

Next time we'll be seeing what happened during and after WW OO.


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