Sunday 3 August 2014

The decline of Vienna Lager

I was really pleased when someone on BeerAdvocate pointed me in the direction of some Austro-Hungarian beer statistics. Something I can never get enough of.

It's confirmed something I'd suspected: that the strength of Austrian beer - in particular that of Vienna - fell towards the end of the 19th century. Confirmation not so much of the fact but of the date. You just have to look at the gravity of modern Austrian Märzen. It's in the range 11.5º to 12.5º Plato. In the 1870's, they were closer to 14º Plato*.

A word of warning: this is going to be a table-heavy post. Just how I like them. Words are very overrated. That may sound a little odd coming from someone who's always dreamed of being a writer.  (Though I am the person with not one but two books without any complete sentences other than the copyright notice.) But some things - like the trends in beer strength we're looking at today - are much easier to explain through the medium of numbers.

The 1860's had been boom time for Vienna beer, with Dreher's Schwechat brewery leading the way. Vienna Lager became all the rage after it was exposed to a wider audience at the Paris International Exhibition of 1867. For a while it became dead trendy and was the first Lager to be regularly sold in London. But the good times don't seem to have lasted that long. There was soon competition in the form of first Bavarian and then Bohemian Lager.

The Schwechat beer that introduced London to Lager was quite strong, with a gravity of 1062º, which 15.2º Balling. It sounds more like an Export than a Märzen, if you ask me. This was probably stronger than the beer usually sold in Vienna.

I was surprised to see beer production falling in Vienna after 1874. But then I looked at the figures for the whole of Austria-Hungary and noticed the same downwards trend. So I thought I'd see what percentage of the total came from Vienna. It shows that proportional less was being brewed in Vienna, falling from just under 24% to almost 21%. I wonder what the reason was? Were Viennese breweries starting to come under pressure in export markets?

Here are the figures:

Austrian beer production 1870 - 1881
Year Austria Vienna % Vienna
1865 7,295,000 1,423,142 19.51%
1870 9,304,000
1871 10,028,000
1872 11,445,000
1873 12,685,000
1874 11,744,000 2,777,403 23.65%
1875 11,536,000 2,740,314 23.75%
1876 11,671,000 2,494,981 21.38%
1877 11,101,000 2,251,150 20.28%
1878 10,815,000 2,424,361 22.42%
1879 10,707,000 2,230,791 20.83%
1880 10,530,000 2,253,688 21.40%
1881 11,530,000 2,393,319 20.76%
Sources:
"Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie 1882", Dr. Ferdinand Fischer, 1883, page 871.
“Bericht über der Welt_Ausstellung zu Paris im Jahre 1867, volume 7”, 1868, page 126. 
European Statistics 1750-1970 by B. R. Mitchell, 1978, page 283.

Now onto the real point of all this: looking at the change in gravity of the beer brewed in Vienna. First broken down by degree Balling in hectolitres:


Beer production of the 25 breweries in the Vienna area by degree Balling (hl)
Year 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 and 16 total
1874 800 1,402,591 67,893 106,131 808,084 231,643 86,199 2,777,403
1875 780 1,442,171 68,928 89,259 776,354 239,718 76,164 2,740,314
1876 11,090 1,413,268 35,583 86,854 725,097 127,342 53,525 2,494,981
1877 3,025 1,283,028 67,092 97,007 625,943 99,224 40,590 2,251,150
1878 150 1,451,560 147,546 35,285 496,750 100,252 47,386 2,424,361
1879 630 1,324,738 173,814 15,486 517,127 106,260 56,166 2,230,791
1880 884 1,497,766 107,628 10,066 600,588 78,326 60,290 2,253,688
1881 85 1,546,523 124,448 42,458 564,576 74,339 52,290 2,393,319
Source:
"Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie 1882", Dr. Ferdinand Fischer, 1883, page 871.


Next by percentage:

Beer production of the 25 breweries in the Vienna area by degree Balling (%)
Year 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 and 16 total
1874 0.03% 50.50% 2.44% 3.82% 29.09% 8.34% 3.10% 97.33%
1875 0.03% 52.63% 2.52% 3.26% 28.33% 8.75% 2.78% 98.29%
1876 0.44% 56.64% 1.43% 3.48% 29.06% 5.10% 2.15% 98.31%
1877 0.13% 56.99% 2.98% 4.31% 27.81% 4.41% 1.80% 98.43%
1878 0.01% 59.87% 6.09% 1.46% 20.49% 4.14% 1.95% 94.00%
1879 0.03% 59.38% 7.79% 0.69% 23.18% 4.76% 2.52% 98.36%
1880 0.04% 66.46% 4.78% 0.45% 26.65% 3.48% 2.68% 104.52%
1881 0.004% 64.62% 5.20% 1.77% 23.59% 3.11% 2.18% 100.48%
Source:
"Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie 1882", Dr. Ferdinand Fischer, 1883, page 871.

Output of 13º beer fell from 29% of the total to 23.5%. 14º beer fared even worse, declining from 8.3% to 3.1%. Surprisingly, output of 12º beer fell by more than 50%. The big winners were 10º beer, up from 50.5% to 64.6% and 11º beer, which went from 2.4% to 5.2%.

(Yes, I realise the percentages don't add up properly. The totals in the original document aren't the sum of the columns. I've just used them as is.)

Grouping the beers into 9º to 12º and 13º to 16º is even more revealing:

Vienna output in two strength groups (hl)
Year 9 to 12 13 to 16 total
1874 1,577,415 1,125,926 2,703,341
1875 1,601,138 1,092,236 2,693,374
1876 1,546,795 905,964 2,452,759
1877 1,450,152 765,757 2,215,909
1878 1,634,541 644,388 2,278,929
1879 1,514,668 679,553 2,194,221
1880 1,616,344 739,204 2,355,548
1881 1,713,514 691,205 2,404,719
Source:
"Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie 1882", Dr. Ferdinand Fischer, 1883, page 871.

Vienna output in two strength groups (%)
Year 9 to 12 13 to 16 total
1874 58.35% 41.65% 100%
1875 59.45% 40.55% 100%
1876 63.06% 36.94% 100%
1877 65.44% 34.56% 100%
1878 71.72% 28.28% 100%
1879 69.03% 30.97% 100%
1880 68.62% 31.38% 100%
1881 71.26% 28.74% 100%
Source:
"Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie 1882", Dr. Ferdinand Fischer, 1883, page 871.


The stronger beers declined from 41.7% to 28.7% of the total.

I wouldn't have been surprised at that percentage of 10º being brewed in Bohemia and Moravia, but I hadn't expected it of Vienna. You learn something every day.

There will be more tables of Autro-Hungarian statistics to follow. How appropriate for the WW I centenary.









* "Theory and Practice of the Preparation of Malt and the Fabrication of Beer" Julius E. Thausing, Anton Schwartz and A.H. Bauer, Philadelphia 1882, pages 748-751

4 comments:

Rod said...

Ron -
I remember you demonstrating that, in Germany, the OG of Festbier/Maerzen and Salvator declined, but the rate of attenuation increased, so that the abv stayed more or less the same. Might that be the same here?

Pivní Filosof said...

The overall decline in the Empire got me thinking. Could it have something to do with bottled beer being made more available at the time?

One of the reasons beer production in CZ fell so significantly a couple of years ago is that people are drinking more at home than at the pub.

Ron Pattinson said...

Pivní Filosof,

I think it's too early for that much bottled beer to be around.

Ron Pattinson said...

Rod,

I think something similar has happened with Lagers everywhere. Their attenuation was mostly pretty riubbish in the 19th century. It's even true of Heineken Pils.