Scottish beer exports

Scotland hit far above its weight when it came to beer exports. I've known this for a long time. Always nice to get numbers to back this up.

Scotland was about 11% of the UK populations, but was the source of almost half of beer exports.

Export of Beer quarter ending 31st March
	1893	1894	1895	% in 1895	population 1895	% pop.
England and Wales	64,840	49,669	64,220	48.78%	30,451,528	77.64%
Scotland	65,645	66,635	63,207	48.01%	4,209,645	10.73%
Ireland	3,911	3,880	4,224	3.21%	4,558,941	11.62%
United Kingdom	134,396	120,184	131,651		39,220,114
Source:
The Brewers' Guardian 1895, page 121.

A considerable percentage of Scottish beer was exported: more than 10%, if we extrapolate these figure out for the whole year, Scottish brewers would have exported more than 200,000 barrels. out of a total of around 1.8 million barrels.

UK brewing stats in 1895
Country	barrels
England & Wales (standard barrels)	27,248,804
Scotland (standard barrels)	1,758,879
Ireland (standard barrels)	2,670,803
UK (standard barrels)	31,678,486
Exports (bulk barrels)	432,742
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1928, p. 115
Brewers' Almanack 1928, page 109.

Which explains why Edinburgh could support so many breweries with a relatively modest population. Not every brewer was involved in the export trade, at least not outside the UK. A considerable quantity of Scottish beer went to England. Both types of export were important for brewers in places like Edinburgh and Alloa.

Exports were far less important, relatively speaking, for English brewers. Around 200,000 barrels out of more than 27 million in total. Which isn't to say the exports weren't important for all English brewers. Exports were important for brewers such as Bass and Allsopp, who had made a speciality of shipping beer long distances. The vast majority of English brewers didn't export any beer.

You might be surprised by the tiny quantities of beer exported from Ireland. Large amounts were being shipped to England and Scotland by Guinness, but that didn't count as exports. As soon as part of Ireland became independent, UK beer imports jumped by a million barrels a year.