Statistics of Brewing in Scotland for 1873

You know what I've not done for ages? Published loads of numbery things about Scottish brewing. Output by region, number of breweries. That sort of thing.

You have to hand it to the Inland Revenue. They were very efficient at collecting numbers as well as taxes. What a nightmare it would have been had beer not been taxed in Britain. We'd have very little idea how much beer was brewed in any year. These figures, broken down by revenue collection, give a good idea of the spread of brewing and breweries around Scotland. And by comparing them with the figures for 1849, longer-term trends are also apparent.

This isn't much of a newspaper article. Just a table of numbers, really:

"STATISTICS OF BREWING IN SCOTLAND.
Among the Parliamentary papers issued on Tuesday was a return compiled in the Inland Revenue Office showing the number of persons in each of the several collections of the United Kingdom licensed as brewers' victuallers to sell beer to be drunk on the premises, and to sell beer not to be drunk on the premises, stating the number of each class who brew their own beer, and the quantity of malt consumed by them, particularising each class in each collection, from the 1st October 1872 to the 30th September 1873. This return gives the following figures in regard to the collections in Scotland :

Collections.	Number of licences issued to common Brewers	Number of licences issued to Victuallers	Victuallers who brew their own beer	Bushels of Malt consumed by common Brewers	Bushels of Malt consumed by common Victuallers
Aberdeen	0	848	22	0	66,106
Campbeltown	0	145	0	0	0
Dumfries	5	472	6	10,564	22,673
Dundee	1	1,259	32	38,049	94,721
Edinburgh	30	1,227	0	1,678,600	0
Elgin	0	432	9	0	24,504
Fort-William	0	29	0	0	0
Glasgow	10	2,310	0	419,430	0
Greenock	9	1,833	1	70,834	3,167
Haddington	8	781	13	63,698	46,068
Inverness	0	335	3	0	8,434
Linlithgow	3	1,318	2	39,971	38,848
Oban	0	64	0	0	0
Orkney	0	50	2	0	408
Perth	2	505	20	4,936	47,483
Poolewe	0	26	0	0	0
Shetland	0	33	0	0	0
Skye	0	38	0	0	0
Stirling	6	732	10	244,162	38,699
Stornoway	0	29	0	0	0
Thurso	0	49	0	0	0
Wick	1	75	0	239	0
Totals	75	12,592	120	2,570,504	356,111
Totals	75	12,590	120	2,570,483	391,111

Beer exported from 1st October 1872 to 1st October 1873:-

	Quantity.	Declared Value.
From Scotland	54,216 barrels	£237,499
From United Kingdom,	583,602 "	£2,385,306

Falkirk Herald - Thursday 16 July 1874, page 2.

Wondering why there are two sets of totals? The first is from the newspaper. The second is the actual total of the figures in the column. They seem to have messed up their additions somewhat.

It's apparent that Edinburgh was the undisputed champion of Scottish brewing. The table below will makes that even clearer. I've constructed it from the figures in the newspaper table, assuming two bushels of malt to one barrel of beer.

Collections.	barrels brewed by common brewers	barrels brewed by victuallers	total barrels brewed	% of total brewed	total no breweries	% of total
Aberdeen		33,053	33,053	2.23%	22	11.28%
Campbeltown			0		0
Dumfries	5,282	11,337	16,619	1.12%	11	5.64%
Dundee	19,025	47,361	66,385	4.48%	33	16.92%
Edinburgh	839,300		839,300	56.68%	30	15.38%
Elgin		12,252	12,252	0.83%	9	4.62%
Fort-William			0		0
Glasgow	209,715		209,715	14.16%	10	5.13%
Greenock	35,417	1,584	37,001	2.50%	10	5.13%
Haddington	31,849	23,034	54,883	3.71%	21	10.77%
Inverness		4,217	4,217	0.28%	3	1.54%
Linlithgow	19,986	19,424	39,410	2.66%	5	2.56%
Oban			0		0
Orkney		204	204	0.01%	2	1.03%
Perth	2,468	23,742	26,210	1.77%	22	11.28%
Poolewe			0		0
Shetland			0		0
Skye			0		0
Stirling	122,081	19,350	141,431	9.55%	16	8.21%
Stornoway			0		0
Thurso			0		0
Wick	120		120	0.01%	1	0.51%
Totals			0		195
Totals	1,285,242	195,556	1,480,797	100%	195	100%

Over 50% of Scottish beer was brewed in Edinburgh. The only other region with over 10% was Glasgow. It's 14% is up considerably for 1849 in both relative and absolute terms. Percentage wise, from 6.82% to 14.16%. In terms of quantity, from29,725 to 209,715 barrels. The growth in output in Edinburgh was almost as impressive, rising from 201,421 to 839,300 barrels.

It shows just how much Scottish brewing boomed in the middle of the 19th century. Total ouput rose from 435,792 to 1,480,797 barrels. That's a rise of over 300% in 24 years.

The geographical spread of breweries was narrowing. In the Highland collections - Campbeltown, Inverness, Oban, Fort-William, Poolewe, Thurso, Wick and Elgin - there was just 1 common brewer and three publican brewers. In the Island collections - Stornoway, Orkney, Shetland and Skye - there were only 2 publican brewers, both on Orkney. Eventually there would be no breweries at all outside the central Lowlands.

Finally the exports. At 50,000-odd barrels they were still quite modest in 1873. And less than 10% of total UK exports. That would change, as Scottish breweries came to dominate British exports at the end of the 19th century.