Until the recent moratorium on book-buying imposed by my wife, I'd been building up a good collection of Swedish titles (mostly by Samuel E. Bring). My Abebook searches for "bryggeri" also popped out a couple of Danish books. Already getting warnings from Dolores, I bought only one: "Bryggerne og de tre store udforgringer" ("Brewers and the three great challenges", if I remember my Danish correctly), an oddly-titled history of the Danish brewers' association.
Brewers' associations are very good at compiling statistics. (Much better than they are a protecting their smaller members' interests.) They're some of my best sources. The Brewers' Almanack, issued annually by the Brewers' Society in Britain is brimming with essential facts. The Deutscher Brauer Bund website is my main reference for modern German statistics. I've already admitted my numbers dependency. These provide my fix.
When I ordered the book, I was hoping that it would have a few numbers in it. It sort of does. Unfortunately in the form of graphs. The numbers below I had to work out with a ruler. The ones for the number of breweries I could get spot on. The hectolitre figures are more imprecise. They could be 50,000 hl out. Or so.
The Danish Brewers Association is actually the Large Danish Brewers Association, and it looks like it has always been like that. On my island of Funen, which usually makes up 10% of Danish statistics, I have seen the number 100 breweries in 1900, with most being small village or neighbourhood brewers that only brewed "Hvidtøl" (ale). There was a sharp decline around the World War (when hvidtøl went out of fashion, partly because our old friend the taxman), and again after 1950 (consolidation of large pilsner brewers and closing of the last village breweries).
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