Thursday 11 August 2022

Hop growing in the DDR (part 2)

As promised, more details on hop growing in the DDR.The fledgling industry got off to a slow start in the early 1950s, but by its final years had grown to a decent size.

It would be interesting to see figures for some later years. Because it looks like a plateau was reached in the 1960s. I must have a look in the later editions of Kunze.

There's a note which says that the harvests of 1956, 1960 and 1961 were badly affected by summer thunderstorms. Which I suppose explains the poor yield in those years. I wonder what happened in 1962? Where the yield was even worse than in 1960.

By the 1960s, had the DDR become self-sufficient in hops? Possibly. Hang on. I have the numbers. I have the quantity of beer brewed and I know what the hopping rates were.

The maximum hopping rates for the most popular styles, Vollbier Hell and Deutsches Pilsner, were 240 gm and 350 gm per hectolitre, respectively.The most heavily hopped style, Deutscher Porter, received a maximum of 650 gm per hectolitre. The average hopping rate couldn't have been more than around 300 gm/hl.

By 1959, the DDR was producing just shy of 100 gm of hops per hectolitre of beer brewed. Which by my calculations was around a third of their requirements. Did they eventually manage to achieve self sufficiency? We'll find out in a later post.

DDR beer and hop production 1951 - 1959
year hl beer kg hops gm/hl
1951 5,739,556 0 0
1952 6,991,555 2,500 0.36
1953 8,390,848 29,500 3.52
1954 10,631,354 98,000 9.22
1955 11,772,064 335,000 28.46
1956 11,073,236 294,000 26.55
1957 12,955,326 691,000 53.34
1958 12,884,952 1,014,000 78.70
1959 13,659,064 1,327,000 97.15
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1962, page 54.
Technologie Brauer und Mälzer by Wolfgang Kunze, VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, 2nd edition, 1967, page 43.

Here are the raw hop production figures:

Hop growing in the DDR 1951 - 1965
Year Area in ha Production in dt Production per dt/ha
1951 0 0  
1952 6 25  
1953 45 295  
1954 159 980  
1955 444 3,350  
1956 687 2,940 4.3
1957 875 6,910 7.9
1958 1,006 10,140 10.1
1959 1,150 13,270 11.6
1960 1,415 12,160 8.6
1961 1,705 9,810 5.8
1962 1,967 14,742 7.5
1963 2,090 26,550 12.7
1964 2,128 26,288 12.3
1965 2,135 20,200 9.4
Source:
Technologie Brauer und Mälzer by Wolfgang Kunze, VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, 2nd edition, 1967, page 43.

 

5 comments:

Matt said...

Wikipedia has a page on the guy who seems to have been one of the key people in East German hop production: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Borde

Michael Foster said...

Sorry for the unrelated comment but had to tell you I went to Butcher's Tears yesterday and it did not disappoint. Their mild was on point and the staff was friendly and extremely knowledgeable. Thank you for the recommendation!

Christian said...

There was a very frosty spring in 1962 so the work in the hop fields began very late in April. Temperature was too low even in the summer and as Sting would say: heavy clouds but no rain. In autuum GDR bought hops in czechoslovakia, yugoslavia and even from north korea.

Rob Sterowski said...

You would have thought TGL would have made a final ruling on whether it’s Der Porter or Das Porter.

Christian said...

That's great, Matt. Haven't heard his name yet. Thank you