Hops in 1893

More hop statistics, this time courtesy of a Grantham newspaper.

I've always thought of Grantham as the evil twin of Newark, where I grew up. Not that I know Grantham particularly well. I can't have visited the place more than half a dozen times. Once was to  attend a CAMRA meeting. That the pub was serving the original Barnsley Bitter should give some indication of how long ago that was.

Me and Dolores had to wait an hour or two there once on the way back from Skegness. She wasn't impressed. "It makes Newark look exciting." she said.

Sorry for wandering off there. Hops I should be talking about.

What's interesting about this set of numbers is that not just the prodduction but also the consumption of hops is given. You have to be a little careful with figures like these because most hops aren't consumed in the year they're grown, but the following year. So, for example, if 1892 has there had been a bumper crop in the UK, it might well have been self-sufficient in hops, despite growing fewer in 1893 than were used that year.

That said, the UK wasn't self-sufficient and did indeed depend on imports from, amongst others, the USA.

Hops in 1893 (zentner)
	grown	consumed
Great Britain	489,735	594,187
Germany	265,189	417,596
Austria	143,466	135,694
America	418,612	320,533
total		1,696,588
Source:
Grantham Journal - Saturday 18 August 1894, page 7.

This next table shows that Germany wasn't the net importer of hops it appears to be in the first table. The 486,600 zentners uit produced on average exceeds 420,000 or so it needed for brewing. While Austria was a much bigger net exporter than it appeared.

Hop production 1896 - 1900 (zentners of 50 kg)
	1896	1897	1898	1899	1900	average
Germany	510,000	473,000	436,000	581,000	433,000	486,600
UK	453,000	417,000	302,000	661,000	353,000	437,200
Austria	230,000	162,000	186,000	254,000	213,000	209,000
USA	309,000	344,000	339,000	380,000	329,000	340,200
Source:
Barth Hop Report 1910

I think I've still a few hop numbers I've not bothered you with yet. I'll try to dig them out.

Beer in India in the 1880's

I've been trawling the newspaper archives, looking for stuff on brewing in India. I've hauled in a few tasty-looking fish,

Let's start with one from the 1880's:

"The Bombay Government have completed arrangements with a firm of brewers of Kassouli to supply the European troops of Bombay, Poonah, Deolah, Mhow, Ahmednuggur, and Belgaum with 13,000 barrels of beer annually for a period of five years, the firm in question meantime erecting a brewery at Poonah for its production. The consumption by the British troops of malt liquor brewed in India is steadily increasing, while the quantity imported from England for that purpose is yearly diminishing."
Morning Post - Tuesday 02 September 1884, page 5.

13,000 barrels may not sound like a huge amount, but it represents about 10% of the beer brewed in India in the 1880's. The brewery in Poonah quickly grew to one of the largest in India, probably on the back of that contract to supply British troops.


That claim about imports of beer declining just doesn't stand up, I'm afraid.

Beer imported into India 1881 - 1890
Year	gallons	barrels
1881	1,152,678	32,018.83
1882	1,199,395	33,316.53
1883	1,170,554	32,515.39
1884	1,261,444	35,040.11
1885	1,066,444	29,623.44
1886	1,299,408	36,094.67
1887	1,715,638	47,656.61
1888	2,138,518	59,403.28
1889	2,398,580	66,627.22
1890	2,797,965	77,721.25
Source:
"Statistical abstract for the British Empire, Issue 33", 1896, pages 42-43.
"Statistical abstract for the British Empire, Issue 34", 1897, pages 42-43.

Though there was a slight dip in 1885, in general imports rose during the 1880's, ending rthe decade around double what they were at the beginning.

And this article directly contradicts the last one:

"MR. J. E. O'Conor's official review of the trade of India, just issued in the form of a Blue-book, comprises among its mass of facts and figures many details of special interest. Last year witnessed, we are told, the largest import into India of malt liquors ever known, the quantity being no less than 2,138,518 gallons, or more than twenty-five per cent. in excess of the imports of the previous year. Beer brewed in India amounts, it appears, to more than double that quantity, but it is nearly all bought by the Government for the British troops. Hence the competition of the home-brewed liquor has had no effect on the trade in beer imported for general consumption. At one time it appeared that imported beer was losing its hold on the Indian market, but the German and Austrian beers were opportunely introduced; light English ales were then specially brewed to compete with them, and the result is that the importation of beer is thus large and increasing."
London Daily News - Tuesday 04 December 1888, page 5.

That's an interesting point: as all the locally-brewed beer was sold directly to the government to supply British troops it didn't directly compete with imports. Locally-brewed beer did have one big advantage: it was untaxed, there being no excise duty on alcohol in India.

Reading the article, it sounds as if British brewers had successfully fought off competition from German and Austrian Lager by brewing Ales with similar qualities. I've seen adverts from the 1890's where brewers boast that their beers have all the good features of Lager. The ability of British brewers to mimic Lager to some extent with very light Ales has also been proposed as one reason why Lager brewing took so long to take off in Britian.

Once again, there's a false claim: that more beer was imported into India in 1888 than ever before. That's not true. The peak year in my figures was 1860 when 3,850,291 gallons (106,953 barrels) were imported*.

Next time we'll be looking at the 1890's.



* "Statistical abstract for the British Empire, Issue 9", 1873, pages 34-35.

World beer production 1912 - 1922

I've still not finished kicking the hop ball around. No sign of me getting bored just yet.

Once again, I've picked numbers from before and after WW I. In fact this is a perfect set of numbers for analysing the enormous impact of the war on the brewing industry.

I used to think that British beer took a hammering in WW I. Now I've looked into it more, I realise that Britain got off lightly compared to most of the rest of Europe. Even those countries which weren't directly involved, such as Switzerland and Denmark, saw beer production shrink. The only exception was the Southern European countries (Spain, Portugal and Italy).

It's a bit tricky making direct comparisons for the two major powers on the losing side, Germany and Austria-Hungary because of border changes. Especially in the case of Austria-Hungary, which was split among several new countries. Germany also lost a considerable amount of territory to Poland in the East and France in the West. But still nowhere like enough to account for a fall in production of 39 million hectolitres.

World hop consumption and beer production 1912 - 1922
	1912/13			1921/22
Counrtry	Probable beer production (hl)	hops (pfund) per hl beer	hop consumption (1,000 Zentner)	Probable beer production (hl)	hops (pfund) per hl beer	hop consumption (1,000 Zentner)
Germany	69,000,000	0.38	262	30,000,000	0.38	114
Austria	26,000,000	0.55	143
German Austria and Hungary				2,000,000	0.55	11
Czechoslovakia and eastern states				6,000,000	0.55	33
Yugoslavia and the Balkans				1,300,000	0.6	7.8
France	17,000,000	0.5	85	8,000,000	0.5	40
Belgium and the Netherlands	19,000,000	0.5	95	8,000,000	0.5	40
Russia	11,000,000	0.8	88
Scandinavia and Denmark	5,700,000	0.5	28	5,500,000	0.4	22
Switzerland	3,000,000	0.5	15	1,500,000	0.5	7.5
Spain, Portugal and Italy	800,000	0.5	4	1,600,000	0.5	8
Continental Europe	151,500,000	0.48	720	63,900,000	0.44	283.3
UK	58,000,000	1.0	580	42,000,000	1.2	504
Europe	209,500,000	0.62	1300	105,900,000	0.74	787.3
USA	74,000,000	0.5	370	Prohibition	-	110
Canada	1,900,000	0.6	11	1,200,000	0.6	7.2
Central America	600,000	0.6	3.5	600,000	0.6	3.6
South America	2,800,000	0.6	16	3,100,000	0.6	18.6
Americas	79,300,000	0.51	400.5	4,900,000	0.60	29.4
East Asia	400,000	0.6	2.5	1,400,000	0.6	8.4
Australia and New Zealand	2,800,000	0.75-1.0	23	3,200,000	0.9	28.8
Africa and India	300,000	0.6	2	800,000	0.7	5.6
Asia and Africa	3,500,000	0.79	27.5	5,400,000	0.79	42.8
World	293,200,000	0.59	1734	116,200,000	0.83	969.5
Source:
Barth Hop Report 1911-1912
Barth Hop Report 1914-1915 to 1920-1921

One other handy feature of this table is the quantity of hops used. In 1912/13 the UK used almost a third of total world consumption. By 1921/22 that was up to more than 50%. That can be partly accounted for by the much heavier hopping of British beer, around treble the rate in Germany. The British really did love their hops in the past.

Just to emphasise how big the drop in beer production was, here is the fall in percentage terms:

World beer production
Country	% change
Germany	-56.52%
France	-52.94%
Belgium and the Netherlands	-57.89%
Scandinavia and Denmark	-3.51%
Switzerland	-50.00%
Spain, Portugal and Italy	100.00%
Continental Europe	-57.82%
UK	-27.59%
Europe	-49.45%
Canada	-36.84%
Central America	0.00%
South America	10.71%
Americas	-93.82%
East Asia	250.00%
Australia and New Zealand	14.29%
Africa and India	166.67%
Asia and Africa	54.29%
World	-60.37%
Source (derived from):
Barth Hop Report 1911-1912
Barth Hop Report 1914-1915 to 1920-1921

The only region of the world to see an increase in beer production was Asia, which was mostly untouched by the war.

Note also that the fall in beer production was greater in victorious France than defeated Germany. The explanation is pretty simple: a high percentage of French breweries were in the area occupied by the Germans. All lost their copper, many had their buildings damaged or destroyed as well.

I'd argue that Prohibition, which was responsible for the massive decline in beer output in the Americas, was also a result of the war. It was pushed through during the war, partly based on fear of the Germans who dominated American brewing.

Put in a nutshell, WW I more than halved world beer production. An unprecedented disaster. 

The tax increase that changed British beer

The budget in 1931 had a huge impact on British beer. It was an attempt by the British government to raise more cash in response to the worldwide slump that follwed th stock market crash of 1929. It didn't work out anything like chancellor Snowden hoped.

The tax on a standard barrel of beer (36 gallons of beer with an OG of 1055º) had been 80 shillings since 1924. Quite a long period, by modern standards. In 1931 it was increased to 114 shillings, which raised the average price of a pint from 6d to 7d. At a time of high unemployment and stagnant or even falling wages, what happened is no surprise. Consumption fell.

"BIG DROP BRITISH BEER PRODUCTION
Decrease of Three-quarters of a Million Barrels in Six Months.
A decrease of over three-quarters a million standard barrels of beer produced in the first half of this year, compared with the first half 1930, is indicated in a written answer to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a written answer to a question put by E. Winterton (Lab., Loughborough).

Mr Snowden states : The number of standard and bulk barrels of beer produced in Great Britain and Northern Ireland during the half-years ended June 30, and 1931, respectively, and during the months of July and August, in the years 1930 and 1931, was as follows

	Standard Barrels.	Bulk Barrels.
Six months ended—
June 30, 1930	9,115,427	11,685,770
June 30, 1931	8,314,279	10,733,878
July, 1930	1,918,455	2,523,103
July, 1931	1,777,613	2,347,465
August, 1930	1,577,375	2,055,363
August, 1931	1,464,800*	1,921,700*

* Approximate."
Western Daily Press - Thursday 08 October 1931, page 9.

Two things buggered the amount of tax collected: a fall in consumption and a fall in gravity. Rather than increase the price of mass consumption beers such as Mild, brewers simply lowered the gravity so they sould sell it at the same price. The average gravity of Mild dropped from 1043º to 1037º.

After two years the government reversed the increase, but the damage had been done. Rather than raise the gravity of Mild back to the 1930 level, brewers merely reduced the price from 6d to 5d. Which meant that the tax generated fell even more in 1934.

By 1938 production levels had returned to a similar level to in 1930, but, because of the fall in average gravity, tax receipts were still lower. It was only when the tax was increased in 1940 to 104 shillings a standard barrel that the sum generatedexceeded that of 1930.

UK beer production and tax receipts 1930 - 1940
	Total Tax £	bulk barrels	standard barrels	average OG
1930	71,254,674	25,061,956	19,550,867	1042.9
1931	69,269,299	23,900,213		1042.54
1932	68,710,020	20,790,812	15,514,209	1041.04
1933	67,097,581	17,950,303	12,658,324	1039.52
1934	53,884,405	20,182,308	15,043,120	1040.99
1935	53,582,335	20,864,814	15,577,836	1041.06
1936	55,451,926	21,969,763	16,386,985	1041.02
1937	57,318,585	22,724,450	16,985,231	1041.1
1938	61,241,404	24,205,631	18,055,539	1041.02
1939	62,370,034	24,674,992	18,364,156	1040.93
1940	75,157,022	25,366,782	18,738,619	1040.62
Sources:
1955 Brewers' Almanack
Brewers' Society Statistical Handbook 1988, p.7
Brewers' Society Statistical Handbook 1973, p.11

Brewers had been perfectly aware of the likely impact of the tax increase and had warned the government. Here's one from a favourite character of mine, Calder, the canny Scot who rescued Allsopp:

"THE BEER TAX
BREWER DECLARES IT "GIGANTIC BLUNDER"
A striking speech on the injury to the revenue and to British trade by the additional beer duty imposed by the Supplementary Budget was made last night by Mr. J. J. Calder, managing director of Allsopps Brewery Company, at the annual dinner of the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Licensed Victuallers and Beer and Wine Trade Association Nottingham.

Mr. Calder declared that a gigantic mistake had been made, and that the tax, while it will fail to yield additional revenue, will seriously affect the employment brewery workers, ruin the market for barley and hops, and injure every industry which depends on the brewery trade.

The sale of beer had gone down by a percentage which was disastrous from the point of view of the revenue, of the brewer, and particularly of the licence-holder."
Western Morning News - Thursday 26 November 1931, page 8.

Slumping prioduction also had a knock-on effect on brewery profits and share prices:

"BREWERIES' SLUMP
MARKET DISAPPOINTED BY BUDGET
The outstanding feature of the Stock Exchange was the sharp set-back to Breweries, the market being very disappointed at the maintenance of the beer duty.

Courages and Guinness both lost over 5/-, while Watney deferreds and Meuxs both shed 4/9. Hoares slipped back to 40/-, while Benskins, Bass, Barclays, Allsops, Ind Coopes, and Taylor Walkers all showed appreciable losses."
Gloucester Citizen - Wednesday 20 April 1932, page 12.

How did the tax rise change British beer forever? It created modern Dark Mild. For the first time standard Mild fell below 4% ABV. A place it's been ever since.

Gardening made easy!

You have to love the title of this advert. I liked it so much, I used it myself.

Tamworth Herald - Saturday 09 April 1910, page 1

Funnily enough, I've been doing a bit of gardening myself this week. The rest of the family are away in Germany visiting relatives. Before Dolores left she wrote down my tasks for the week. Top of the list was watering the garden. And picking the raspberries.

The raspberries have done really well this year. So well, they need to be pocked every day. It's strangely calming peering under the leaves, dodging the thorns and plucking the plump red berries. I'm beginning to get the appeal of gardening.

I'd always associated gardening with drudgery, a sort of slave labour. I associate it with being forced to work on my brother's bloody allotment, picking weeds and digging. Lots of bloody digging. What fun that was.

Picking raspberries reminded me of something else. Blackberrying. Dad used to drive out into the countryside around Newark to collect blackberries. There were masses of brambles in the hedgerows. After half an hour our plastic bags were bulging with fruit and our fingers stained purple. Blackberries are a good bit trickier to pick than raspberries. The fruit are less visible - the crimson of rapberries shines amid the pale green leaves - and the thorns thicker and crueler. And often we'd be stretching over a ditch to reach the bines.

Once home, Mum would transform the fruit into pies and jam. Apple and blackberry pie is still my favourite.

They're right in that advert. A couple of beers does make gardening easy. At least that was my experience yesterday. A brace of Abts helped me drift into serene contemplation. Thank you beer.

Got a bit distracted there. I did actually have a beery point to make. About the beers in that advert. It's a very limited range. There's no draught Porter or Stout. No strong beer of any kind. Mostly it's just Bitter and Mild (not quite sure what the Mild Dinner Ale was, but it's one of those two). It's an indication of the waning popularity of Stout in the provinces.

You probably want my guess at their strengths, don't you? OK, here are my carefully considered estimates:

Beer	OG
Good Mild Dinner Ale	1040-45
Full Bodied Ale	1050
Light Bitter Ale	1045
India Pale Ale	1055
Nourishing Stout	1050

It's like a glimpse into the future, how British beer would be in 15 or 20 years time.

The brewery was quite small, brewing probably around 5,000 barrels a year. You can read more about it here.

Breweries in British India

I told you I'd found more stuff in brewing in India. This newspaper report handily includes some figures relating to brewing in India.

"BREWERIES IN BRITISH INDIA.
According a memorandum received the Board of Trade from the Director-General Commercial Intelligence at Calcutta, the quantity of beer brewed in India in 1909 amounted 4,824,050 gallons. There are twenty-four breweries, of which one did not work. Seventeen are private property, and seven are owned joint-stock with nominal capital of Rs.29,06,000, of Rs.24,35,200 was at the end of 1909-10. Twelve of the breweries are situated at stations in the Himalayas from Murree to Darjeeling. The largest of the breweries is at Murree; the Bangalore, Kasaul, and breweries standing next. Production was largest in 1902, since when it has tended to decline, while imports of foreign beer have increased proportionally; in the year 1907 the process was reversed, internal production advancing slightly and imports decreasing; but 1908 the production again receded. In 1909 both production and imports further decreased.

The quantity of beer brewed India and imported was as follows :

	Brewed in India. Gallons.	Imported. Gallons.
1905	5,994,955	4,626,608
1906	5,599,930	5,153,751
1907	6,610,121	4,805,640
1908	5,185,619	4,384,938
1909	4,824,050	4,286,811

A substantial quantity of beer brewed in India is consumed British troops that country. In 1907 the Army Commissariat purchased some 38 per cent. of the total production, and the average purchases the years 1903-7 amounted to 2,633,616 gallons yearly. From 1st January, 1903, the general contracts with Indian breweries for the supply of malt liquor to British troops have been discontinued, each British regiment being left free to make its own arrangements to obtain the necessary supply; as a consequence the figures of Army consumption are no longer readily available.
Aberdeen Journal - Saturday 15 April 1911, page 9.

I was really pleased to find those statistics on imports and local production. I love me some numbers. But I find gallons an odd unit to use, so here they are converted to barrels:

Indian beer production and imports 1905 - 1909 (barrels)
	Brewed in India	Imported	average output per brewery
1905	166,527	128,517	6,939
1906	155,554	143,160	6,481
1907	183,614	133,490	7,651
1908	144,045	121,804	6,002
1909	134,001	119,078	5,583
Source:
Aberdeen Journal - Saturday 15 April 1911, page 9.

You can see that I've also added the average output per brewery. It was pretty small. And a large proportion of it was consumed by British troops. Presumably the bulk of the remainder was also consumed by expats.

I was hypothesising that by the early 1900's foreign brewers had probably grabbed a fair chunk of the trade when I realised I had the figures. Turns out I was totally wrong. The vast majority of beer imported into India still came from the UK.

Beer imports into India 1900 - 1907 (barrels)
	imports of British beer	total imports	% British
1900-01	83,724.00	89,625.94	93.41%
1902-03	99,487.33	106,137.17	93.73%
1904-05		127,986.94
1905-06		138,956.89
1906-07	125,170.69	136,563.72	91.66%
Source:
"The commercial products of India" by Sir George Watt, 1908, page 762

Over 90% of India's beer imports still came from Britain between 1900 and 1907. I was quite surprised at that.

When you look at the quantities of beer imported into India it's amazing the impact that IPA had. Between 1849 and 1897, the greatest quantity imported was 107,000 barrels in 1860. The average over that period was 58,000 barrels a year.

Let's put that into perspective. In 1900 the population of the UK (41.5 million) consumed about 37 million barrels of beer*. That's about 0.89 of a barrel each. So about 65,000 people would be needed to consume 58,000 barrels of beer. That's less than the population of Reading in 1901 (72,000).

But India was an important export market for British brewers. In 1905 Britain exported 521,746 barrels of beer**, meaning about 25% of exports went to India.




* Brewers' Almanack 1928, p. 110.
** Brewers' Almanack 1928, p. 115.

Hop production by country 1900 - 1921

We're back with hops today. With another sexy little table to seduce us, fluttering its eyelids and waggling its arse. Aren't we lucky?

Why am I bothering you with this particular table? Because it straddles WW I and shows the effect of the war on the hop trade. Or lack of effect, in some cases.

The four countries with the biggest share of hop production  - Germany, USA, UK and Czechoslovakia - remained at the top of the pile for most of the 20th century. With the exception of Britain, whose hop industry collapsed in the 1980's.

It's a great irony that the country to profit most from the effects of the war, the USA, wasn't brewing any beer at all by the time of the last figures. Presumably it was exports that kept hop growing alive in the US. I can't think of many uses for hops other than in making beer.

Share of world hop production by country
Country	1900/01	1905/06	1910/11	1914/15	1919/20	1920/21
Germany	27.97%	24.56%	25.14%	24.50%	11.94%	13.56%
UK	22.80%	28.60%	18.88%	26.51%	25.47%	25.92%
USA	21.25%	20.39%	25.52%	26.20%	35.27%	32.08%
Czechoslovakia formerly Bohemia	10.01%	11.85%	14.43%	14.41%	11.67%	11.63%
Russia	5.17%	4.05%	3.70%	war zone	-	-
France	4.65%	2.87%	3.45%	2.83%	7.98%	8.69%
Belgium	3.36%	4.33%	3.70%	war zone	1.99%	3.38%
Australia	1.04%	0.60%	0.65%	0.82%	2.90%	2.28%
Other countries	3.75%	2.75%	4.53%	4.73%	2.78%	2.46%
Source:
Barth Hop Report 1914-1915 to 1920-1921

In Britain and Belgium (more surprisingly) Belgium the war appears from this table to have had little effect. But if you look at the acreage under hops and the quantity of hops produced, you can see that this wasn't the case.

Hop production and acreage
	1913	1921	1912	1922
Country	ha	ha	zentners	zentners
Germany	27,048	11,279	460,000	173,000
UK	14,449	10,179	375,000	325,000
USA	21,790	11,300	499,000	275,000
Czechoslovakia	15,878	8,640	334,000	109,000
France	2,861	4,214	60,000	86,000
Alsace-Lorraine	4,185	2,665	95,000	61,000
Belgium	2,283	1,500	70,000	27,000
World	101,078	52,955	1,975,000	1,074,000
Sources:
Barth Hop Report 1913-1914
Barth Hop Report 1922-1923

(I've used different years for the production because 1913 and 1921 were both years with a particularly bad harvest.)

In absolute terms, production fell everywhere except France.  And the only reason it increased there was because of the transfer of Alsace-Lorraine back to France. Globally hop production was approximately cut in half as a result of WW I.

Indian-brewed IPA

It seems several lifetimes ago that I was obsessively researching and writing about Pale Ale and India. Before Scotland and all things hops. Oh well. Today I'm returning to that particular well, with a bucket and a thirst.

Thanks to Bailey of Boak and Bailey for pointing me in the direction of this.

There had been breweries in India since the middle of the 19th century, but they had been limited to higher-altitude regions in the north of the country until the development of artificial refrigeration after 1870. In the south of India, it seems that it took rather longer for breweries to appear.

"THE MADRAS B.B.B. BREWERY CO., LTD.
There are not many cities of the same size as Madras which, up to quite a recent date, did not possess a brewery for the manufacture of beer, ale, and stout, and yet this busy, dusty, thirst-producing town had no such industry as brewing until the year 1913. when the Madras B.B.B. Brewery Co., Ltd.—which is an offshoot of the British Beer Breweries, Ltd., of London—was established. The managing agents are Messrs. McDowell & Co., Ltd., of Second Line Beach, Madras, and they have given the same unremitting attention to this venture as to the manufacture of their famous cigars and cigarettes, which have justly earned for themselves an enviable reputation in nearly every civilized country in the world.

The first and the most important consideration in brewing is an abundant supply of pure water, and this was only obtained after fourteen months' diligent search. No fewer than 14 bores were sunk before the spring which is now in use was found. A well 18 ft. in diameter was built, which gives 6,000 gallons of water an hour. This water has been tested by the Government analyst, and it has been certified to be absolutely pure. The buildings were constructed in accordance with plans designed by Messrs. George Adlam & Sons, of Bristol, England, who supplied the up-to-date brewing plant, and they have been erected in such a manner that enlargements can be carried out and additional plant accommodated without difficulty at any time.

The company has acquired the sole rights for the Madras Presidency for the use of S.T. yeast (Saccharomyces Thermantitonum), which differs from the English type in that it is heat-resisting and impervious to the extreme heat of the summer months on the plains of India. Imported yeast, on the other hand, cannot survive for long a temperature of 75° F., and it rapidly dies in the hot weather months. A fully qualified English brewer and chemist is employed as chief brewer, and some 40 hands are regularly engaged at the brewery. Exceedingly good examples of India pale ale and light dinner ale are brewed especially for the Indian climate, from the finest Scotch malt and Kent hops. Pilsener, a beautiful light beer, is made from Bavarian hops and Bohemian malt, and it has all the pleasurable characteristics of the imported article ; while a fine double stout of genuine London type is also the product of British malt and hops only.

There is an excellent market in Madras and in the surrounding districts, as the nearest competing brewery is over 200 miles distant.

The management of affairs at the brewery is in the capable hands of Mr. W. R. Prosser, a brewer and brewing chemist of considerable experience, and though the concern only lately started (May 1913), progress has been so satisfactory and such an encouraging reception accorded to its beers that the future of the company should be a bright one."
"Southern India: Its History, People, Commerce, and Industrial Resources" compiled by Somerset Payne, 1914-1915, page 139.

I'm glad that they bothered to list the types of beer brewed. Most excitingly, an Indian-brewed IPA is among them. Though, without the sea journey, would it have been properly matured?  I'd love to know exactly how they brewed it. If you remember, Burton Pale Ales like Bass spent months in the brewery yard before even starting the journey to India. I can't imagine they could have done the same in tropical Madras.

It's a sign of changing tastes that they made a Pilsener as well as British styles. The outbreak of WW I must have made getting hold of Bavarian hops and Bohemian malt rather tricky. I wonder where they sourced their raw materials during the war?

Was there any particular reason for picking Scottish malt? I suppose when you were shipping it half way around the world, it made little difference if it came Leith or London.

I realise there's one style notable for its absence: Mild Ale. Was it ever brewed in India? It must have been imported at some point, surely.

Saccharomyces Thermantitonum is new to me, but seems pretty damn weird. It was accidentally discovered by Grove Johnson in 1905. Here's what he had to say about it:

"Imagine, then, how my interest was excited by the discovery of a yeast that resisted destruction at 183° F., and whose most favourable temperature for the performance of its functions — budding, fermentation — was found to be, after countless experiments, between 105° and 112° F."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 11, Issue 6, November-December 1905, page 469.

You can see why you would want to use a yeast with these characteristics if brewing in Madras. It sounds as if you could use it in the tropics without the need for refrigeration. It seems such handy stuff, that it would still be used today. Unless, of course, it makes beer that tastes horrible.

Johnson himself saw possibilities for its use in temperate climates, too:

"The habits and characteristics of the new yeast being once under stood, I quickly realised that I had to deal with latent possibilities capable of revolutionising existing methods of tropical brewing, whilst the savings that might be effected at home appeared not less striking. The extremely high temperature favourable to fermentation rendered unnecessary anything in the nature of coolers, refrigerators, and ice machinery, and the extraordinary solidity of the yeast after fermentation obviated the processes of skimming, cleansing, and yeast pressing;"
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 11, Issue 6, November-December 1905, page 470.

It sounds like amazing stuff. Why have I never heard of it before? I'm sure there are homebrewers in Texas who would love to have a yeast that can work at such high temperatures.

The article prompted me to do a litttle digging around on brewing in India. I'll be pestering you with it soon.