Tuesday 12 August 2014

Austrian beer output by º Balling in 1888 (part three)

I realise I've been ever more number-obsessed than usual recently. Must be the warm weather.

We're looking at a final set of three Austro-Hungarian provinces: Galicia, Silesia and Hungary and Siebenbergen, Funnily enough, these are also contiguous territories, amking up the bulk of the northeast of the Empire. But very different from each other in many ways. Galicia was predominantly Polish and Ukrainian speaking, Silesia was a mix of Germans and Czechs, while in Hungary and Siebenbergen Hungarian, Roumanian and Slovak were spoken, with odd clumps of German speakers scattered around.

So it shouldn't come as a shock that the gravity of the beer these provinces brewed was also diverse. But first some general comments. The three provinces combined produced 1,505,278 hl of beer, or 11.5% of the total for the Empire. Pretty pathetic when you realsie that between them they were home to 23.7 of the 40 million people living in the Empire in 1888. That's about 70%.

This table shows just how pathetically small beer output was per head. Apart from tiny Silesia:

Beer output per head of population in 1888
Province population beer output litres/head
Hungary 16,781,800 490,831 2.92
Galicia 6,370,800 708,373 11.12
Silesia 590,500 306,074 51.83
Empire 40,066,600 13,142,429 32.80
Source:
http://www.populstat.info/

Here's the proper table:

Austrian Beer output by º Balling in 1888 (hl)
º Balling Galicia % Silesia % Hungary and Siebenbergen % Total %
6 0 0 0 2,233 0.02%
7 0 0 0 54 0.000%
8 0 0 0 0 0.00%
9 40,856 5.77% 3,517 1.15% 108 0.02% 278,431 2.12%
10 262,745 37.09% 81,168 26.52% 31,698 6.46% 7,226,651 54.99%
11 240,066 33.89% 172,436 56.34% 36,259 7.39% 1,924,339 14.64%
12 147,901 20.88% 35,162 11.49% 143,647 29.27% 2,126,679 16.18%
13 13,191 1.86% 12,723 4.16% 228,490 46.55% 1,173,621 8.93%
14 627 0.09% 362 0.12% 56,419 11.49% 254,212 1.93%
15 524 0.07% 66 0.02% 3,014 0.61% 148,318 1.13%
16 405 0.06% 460 0.15% 196 0.04% 4,973 0.04%
17 1,197 0.17% 0 0 1,497 0.01%
18 189 0.027% 180 0.059% 0 441 0.003%
19 0 0 0 200 0.002%
20 624 0.09% 0 0 732 0.01%
22 48 0.01% 0 0 48 0.00%
total 708,373 5.39% 306,074 2.33% 490,831 3.73% 13,142,429
active breweries 174 8.96% 44 2.27% 88 4.53% 1942
inactive breweries 6 2.07% 9 3.10% 30 10.34% 290
average output per brewery 4,071 6,956 5,578 6,767

Starting with Galicia, here 10º is the most popular strength accounting for 37% of production. 11º follows closely on 34%, then 12º on 21%. In Silesia 11º is first with a 56% share, followed by 10º on 27% and 12º on 11%. Hungary is the oddest looking, with 13º having a 47% share, 12º 29% and 14º on 11%. Unsurprisingly, Silesia shows similar preferences to Bohemia and Moravia, provinces which share a modern country, the Czech Republic, with it. Not sure what to make of Galicia. Hungary just liked stronger beer.

Here's the final table, grouping the gravities together to match (approximately) Schankbier, Lagerbier, Märzen/Export and Bock.

º Balling Galicia % Silesia % Hungary and Siebenbergen %
6 to 10 303,601 42.86% 84,685 27.67% 31,806 6.48%
11 to 12 387,967 54.77% 207,598 67.83% 179,906 36.65%
13 to 15 14,342 2.02% 13,151 4.30% 287,923 58.66%
16 to 22 2,463 0.348% 640 0.21% 196 0.04%

What does it tell us? That Galicia produced a large percentage of the Empire's Bock. Otherwise they liked Schankbier and Lagerbier. It was a similar story in Silesia, with 95% of output in those two classes, but with a somewhat larger preference for the latter than Galicia. Whereas in Hungary Märzen/Export was far and away the most popular with Lagerbier a long way behind.

I'm still not quite done with my Austro-Hungarian number-wrangling. Bet you're glad to hear that.

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