Friday 11 June 2021

Czech beer exports in 1935 and 1936

More lovely numbers from that Polish industry journal. This time relating to Czech brewing. A topic very dear to my heart.

The numbers are for Czech beer exports. Unsurprisingly, their biggest market was in Germany. Their neighbour taking 59% of the total. The quantity having increased considerably from 1935. Luckily for the Czechs, as several other countries took considerably less Czech beer in 1936 than in 1935. Only Germany, the USA and the UK increased their imports.

I'm a little surprised Austria didn't import Czech beer, the two having been in the same country less than two decades previously. And what was going on in Italy? Why did imports fall so dramatically from 1,345 hl to just 3 hl?

I assume that most of the beer being was Pilsner Urquell along with some Budvar.

Let's put the numbers into context. Assuming the annual total was double that of a half year at 80,000 hl. That's about 50,000 UK barrels. In 1936, the UK exported 325,058 barrels, or nearly seven times as much. At the time the UK population was about 47 million and Czechoslovakia's about 15 million. Meaning that, per head of population, Czechoslovakia's beer exports were only about half that of the UK.

Czech beer exports in 1935 and 1936
Country 1st half 1935 1st half 1936
  hl crowns hl crowns
Germany 18,008 3,458,925 23,493 4,450,145
USA 2,702 728,063 3,599 876,810
Great Britain 3,274 614,499 3,845 650,563
Belgium 2,380 429,420 2,211 399,094
Switzerland 1,631 263,900 1,612 247,013
Netherlands 1,414 266,900 1,316 245,648
Austria 1,287 147,807 1,145 133,018
Egypt 916 131,955 738 103,378
France 800 133,609 716 123,274
Poland 632 119,393 392 71,934
Yugoslavia 390 52,758 277 39,388
Palestine 481 161,619 118 31,993
Italy 1,345 245,335 3 1,475
Other countries 499 113,663 318 89,432
total 35,759 6,867,846 39,783 7,463,165
Source:
Przegląd Piwowarsko-Słodowniczy: organ Związku Piwowarów w Polsce 1936 wrzesień R.2 Nr3, page 65.

5 comments:

Michael Foster said...

Interesting to see Palestine and Egypt on the list. I know several Muslim-majority countries have some level of tolerance towards beer (Efes in Turkey is phenomenal), but I wonder if you could do a study of beer exports to these countries historically to see if alcohol tolerance has gone up or done historically.

Ron Pattinson said...

Michael Foster,

both Egypt and Palestine had considwerable non-muslim populations. And they were both administered by Britain. So it might well not have been muslims drinking that Pilsner Urquell.

Michael Foster said...

Ah right, yeah kinda forgot about the Coptics and Palestinian Christians. Very good point.

Steve N said...

Italy - economic sanctions as a result of the Abyssinia Crisis?

Ron Pattinson said...

Steve N,

that might well be it.