Hops in WW I

The UK started struggling to grow enough hops to satisfy demand from brewers in the 1850s. As the century progressed, more and more foreign hops were imported.

The principal source was the USA, initially from New York State, later California and Oregon. But hops were imported from every region in the world. Large quantities of European hops were imported, too. Bavarian and Bohemian hops were considered equal to quality UK hops. Lower quality hops from Belgium and France were also used, despite brewers not much caring for them. They did have the big advantage of being cheap.

Despite the UK being one of the world’s biggest producers of hops, it was enough to meet the needs of brewing.  The industry was dependent on importing large quantities of hops.

There was an enormous fall in the quantity of hops being imported, down to just a few hundred cwts. In 1918. Oddly, one country from which supplies continued to be imported was Belgium, despite most of the country being occupied by the Germans. The one corner still in Belgian hands just happened to include Poperinge, home to the Belgian hop industry.

You can see from the table below that hop imports came to an almost complete stop in the final two years of the war:

Hop production and imports (cwt)
year	Acreage	UK production	yield per acre	Average price of English hops			net imports of foreign hops	exports of British hops
				£	s.	d.
1910	32,886	302,675	9.20	5	6	6	172,032	8,927
1915	34,744	254,101	7.31	6	7	0	199,347	8,288
1917	16,946	225,763	13.32	8	15	0	8,530	12,796
1918	15,666	138,491	8.84	18	15	0	259	6,928
1919	16,745	187,795	11.21	20	5	0	154,091	2,606
1920	21,002	258,042	12.29	19	10	0	455,799	3,672
1921	25,133	236,172	9.40	19	10	0	216,571	2,200
Source:
1928 Brewers' Almanack, page 119

The price of hops also increased dramatically to around three times the pre-war level.

The above is an excerpt from Armistice,  my this wonderful book on brewing in WW I.

There's now also a Kindle version.