Number of UK breweries by size in 1889

One of the things I like most about old brewing trade magazines are the statistics. as you're probably aware if you've been reading this blog for more than five minutes.

There were still an awful lot of breweries in the UK in 1889, though the number was falling quite quickly, by a few hundred every year in the 1880s.

The vast majority were tiny: almost 85% produced fewer than 1,000 standard barrels a year. And most were brewing well under 1,000 barrels. According to my calculations, around 200 barrels on average. Most were pub breweries, which were still very common in some parts of the country, for example the Black country and some of Yorkshire.

Only 34 breweries produced more than 100,000 barrels and only 13 more than 250,000 barrels. That last group was dominated by London and Burton breweries. There was one exception to that. The biggest of them all was Guinness in Dublin. Which is one of the breweries producing over 1 million barrels a year, along with Bass.

I've derived some more fascinating stuff from these numbers. There's something for you to look forward to.

Breweries, brewers licences and duty in 1889
standard barrels brewed	no. of licences issued	malt & corn	sugar	licence and beer duty paid £ s. d.
Under 1,000	10,745	173,745,474	4,169,363	624,651 4 6
1,000 and under 10,000	1,479	417,818,604	39,255,092	1,696,936 6 9
10,000 ,, 20,000	173	292,992,588	28,475,977	1,208,450 17 2
20,000 ,, 30,000	108	196,808,640	22,169,185	825,118 6 10
30,000 ,, 50,000	69	196,776,174	21,642,129	829,915 18 9
50,000 ,, 100,000	48	235,197,816	29,098,953	1,005,725 10 0
100,000 ,, 150,000	13	114,611,700	11,787,908	481,871 8 9
150,000 ,, 200,000	5	64,293,936	5,363,026	264,639 1 3
100,000 ,, 250,000	3	50,602,356	4,164,597	204,895 16 3
250,000 ,, 300,000	3	53,940,222	10,621,244	255,527 13 9
300,000 ,, 350,000	1	22,595,664	3,450,563	101,521 0 0
350,000 ,, 400,000	3	90,048,672	7,043,171	361,118 12 6
400,000 ,, 450,000	1	30,874,368	5,932,856	139,523 16 3
450,000 ,, 500,000	1	40,291,440	1,337,408	153,039 1 6
500,000 ,, 550,000	1	36,925,224	5,876,304	166,904 8 9
550,000 ,, 600,000	1	50,563,212	973,297	185,244 10 0
600,000 ,, 1,000,000	—			—
1,000,000 and over	2	214,186,140	1,416,548	818,087 5 0
Total	12,756	2,282,276,850	202,800,021	9,323,170 19 0
Source:
"The Brewers' Guardian 1890", 1890, page 322.