Retail prices follow-up

In reaction to my last post, a reader enquired about the reason for increases in the price of beer. The simple answer is: tax.

A ridiculous percentage of the retail price of beer was the tax. As I will demonstrate in my usual way - with a table. Having lots and lots of numbers to hand, I can magic up how much of the money you handed over the bar was going straight into the chancellor's pocket.

A note about how I've come up with the figures. To calculate the average tax per pint, I've simply divided the total tax paid by the number of bulk barrels brewed that year. For the average price of a pint, I've used the price of Barclay Perkins Ordinary Bitter, XLK, which was about average gravity. Not totally precise, but close enough.

A standard barrel, in case you're wondering was a nominal unit for calculating tax, that is 36 Imperial gallons with an OG of 1055º. Bulk barrels are the actual volume of beer produced.

From an already high 30% of the retail price at the start of the war, by its end it was pushing double that. Truly eye-watering.

What effect did the high rate of tax have on the industry? It certainly couldn't have  done much for competition. Unless you were operating on a vast scale, any small economies in production or raw materials were going to be an insignificant part of the retail price.

It also incentivised getting beer tax-free. Either by reusing ullage (returned beer) or any grotty bits of beer left at the bottom of fermenters, etc. Brewers were allowed a 6% loss on the volume put into fermenting vessels. If you could cut your wastage to just 2%, you got 4% of your beer free of tax. This was the major advantage large brewers had over their smaller competitors.

UK tax and price per pint 1939 - 1949
Year	Total Tax £	Bulk Barrels	Tax/Std. Brl	Av. OG	price pint	tax pint	Tax (% retail price)
1939	62,370,034	24,674,992	80s	1040.93	7d	2.11d	30.09%
1940	75,157,022	25,366,782	80s / 104s	1040.62	8d	2.47d	30.86%
1941	133,450,205	26,203,803	135s / 165s	1038.51	10d	4.24d	42.44%
1942	157,254,430	29,860,798	165s /240s 7.5d	1035.53	12d	4.39d	36.57%
1943	209,584,343	29,296,672	240s 7.5d / 281s 10.5d	1034.34	13d	5.96d	45.86%
1944	263,170,703	30,478,289	281s 10.5d / 286s 5.5d	1034.63	13d	7.20d	55.35%
1945	278,876,870	31,332,852	286s 5.5d	1034.54	13d	7.42d	57.05%
1946	295,305,369	32,650,200	286s 5.5d	1034.72	13d	7.54d	57.98%
1947	250,350,829	29,261,398	286s 5.5d	1032.59	13d	7.13d	54.84%
1948	264,112,043	30,408,634	325s 5d	1032.66	15d	7.24d	48.25%
1949	294,678,035	26,990,144	364s 4.5d / 343s 4.5d	1033.43	16d	9.10d	56.86%
Sources:
1955 Brewers' Almanack, pages 50 & 80.
1971 Brewers' Almanack, pages 45 & 75.
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001.
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.