The decline of Vienna Lager

I was really pleased when someone on BeerAdvocate pointed me in the direction of some Austro-Hungarian beer statistics. Something I can never get enough of.

It's confirmed something I'd suspected: that the strength of Austrian beer - in particular that of Vienna - fell towards the end of the 19th century. Confirmation not so much of the fact but of the date. You just have to look at the gravity of modern Austrian Märzen. It's in the range 11.5º to 12.5º Plato. In the 1870's, they were closer to 14º Plato*.

A word of warning: this is going to be a table-heavy post. Just how I like them. Words are very overrated. That may sound a little odd coming from someone who's always dreamed of being a writer.  (Though I am the person with not one but two books without any complete sentences other than the copyright notice.) But some things - like the trends in beer strength we're looking at today - are much easier to explain through the medium of numbers.

The 1860's had been boom time for Vienna beer, with Dreher's Schwechat brewery leading the way. Vienna Lager became all the rage after it was exposed to a wider audience at the Paris International Exhibition of 1867. For a while it became dead trendy and was the first Lager to be regularly sold in London. But the good times don't seem to have lasted that long. There was soon competition in the form of first Bavarian and then Bohemian Lager.

The Schwechat beer that introduced London to Lager was quite strong, with a gravity of 1062º, which 15.2º Balling. It sounds more like an Export than a Märzen, if you ask me. This was probably stronger than the beer usually sold in Vienna.

I was surprised to see beer production falling in Vienna after 1874. But then I looked at the figures for the whole of Austria-Hungary and noticed the same downwards trend. So I thought I'd see what percentage of the total came from Vienna. It shows that proportional less was being brewed in Vienna, falling from just under 24% to almost 21%. I wonder what the reason was? Were Viennese breweries starting to come under pressure in export markets?

Here are the figures:

Austrian beer production 1870 - 1881
Year	Austria	Vienna	% Vienna
1865	7,295,000	1,423,142	19.51%
1870	9,304,000
1871	10,028,000
1872	11,445,000
1873	12,685,000
1874	11,744,000	2,777,403	23.65%
1875	11,536,000	2,740,314	23.75%
1876	11,671,000	2,494,981	21.38%
1877	11,101,000	2,251,150	20.28%
1878	10,815,000	2,424,361	22.42%
1879	10,707,000	2,230,791	20.83%
1880	10,530,000	2,253,688	21.40%
1881	11,530,000	2,393,319	20.76%
Sources:
"Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie 1882", Dr. Ferdinand Fischer, 1883, page 871.
“Bericht über der Welt_Ausstellung zu Paris im Jahre 1867, volume 7”, 1868, page 126.
European Statistics 1750-1970 by B. R. Mitchell, 1978, page 283.

Now onto the real point of all this: looking at the change in gravity of the beer brewed in Vienna. First broken down by degree Balling in hectolitres:

Beer production of the 25 breweries in the Vienna area by degree Balling (hl)
Year	9	10	11	12	13	14	15 and 16	total
1874	800	1,402,591	67,893	106,131	808,084	231,643	86,199	2,777,403
1875	780	1,442,171	68,928	89,259	776,354	239,718	76,164	2,740,314
1876	11,090	1,413,268	35,583	86,854	725,097	127,342	53,525	2,494,981
1877	3,025	1,283,028	67,092	97,007	625,943	99,224	40,590	2,251,150
1878	150	1,451,560	147,546	35,285	496,750	100,252	47,386	2,424,361
1879	630	1,324,738	173,814	15,486	517,127	106,260	56,166	2,230,791
1880	884	1,497,766	107,628	10,066	600,588	78,326	60,290	2,253,688
1881	85	1,546,523	124,448	42,458	564,576	74,339	52,290	2,393,319
Source:
"Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie 1882", Dr. Ferdinand Fischer, 1883, page 871.

Next by percentage:

Beer production of the 25 breweries in the Vienna area by degree Balling (%)
Year	9	10	11	12	13	14	15 and 16	total
1874	0.03%	50.50%	2.44%	3.82%	29.09%	8.34%	3.10%	97.33%
1875	0.03%	52.63%	2.52%	3.26%	28.33%	8.75%	2.78%	98.29%
1876	0.44%	56.64%	1.43%	3.48%	29.06%	5.10%	2.15%	98.31%
1877	0.13%	56.99%	2.98%	4.31%	27.81%	4.41%	1.80%	98.43%
1878	0.01%	59.87%	6.09%	1.46%	20.49%	4.14%	1.95%	94.00%
1879	0.03%	59.38%	7.79%	0.69%	23.18%	4.76%	2.52%	98.36%
1880	0.04%	66.46%	4.78%	0.45%	26.65%	3.48%	2.68%	104.52%
1881	0.004%	64.62%	5.20%	1.77%	23.59%	3.11%	2.18%	100.48%
Source:
"Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie 1882", Dr. Ferdinand Fischer, 1883, page 871.

Output of 13º beer fell from 29% of the total to 23.5%. 14º beer fared even worse, declining from 8.3% to 3.1%. Surprisingly, output of 12º beer fell by more than 50%. The big winners were 10º beer, up from 50.5% to 64.6% and 11º beer, which went from 2.4% to 5.2%.

(Yes, I realise the percentages don't add up properly. The totals in the original document aren't the sum of the columns. I've just used them as is.)

Grouping the beers into 9º to 12º and 13º to 16º is even more revealing:

Vienna output in two strength groups (hl)
Year	9 to 12	13 to 16	total
1874	1,577,415	1,125,926	2,703,341
1875	1,601,138	1,092,236	2,693,374
1876	1,546,795	905,964	2,452,759
1877	1,450,152	765,757	2,215,909
1878	1,634,541	644,388	2,278,929
1879	1,514,668	679,553	2,194,221
1880	1,616,344	739,204	2,355,548
1881	1,713,514	691,205	2,404,719
Source:
"Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie 1882", Dr. Ferdinand Fischer, 1883, page 871.

Vienna output in two strength groups (%)
Year	9 to 12	13 to 16	total
1874	58.35%	41.65%	100%
1875	59.45%	40.55%	100%
1876	63.06%	36.94%	100%
1877	65.44%	34.56%	100%
1878	71.72%	28.28%	100%
1879	69.03%	30.97%	100%
1880	68.62%	31.38%	100%
1881	71.26%	28.74%	100%
Source:
"Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie 1882", Dr. Ferdinand Fischer, 1883, page 871.

The stronger beers declined from 41.7% to 28.7% of the total.

I wouldn't have been surprised at that percentage of 10º being brewed in Bohemia and Moravia, but I hadn't expected it of Vienna. You learn something every day.

There will be more tables of Autro-Hungarian statistics to follow. How appropriate for the WW I centenary.









* "Theory and Practice of the Preparation of Malt and the Fabrication of Beer" Julius E. Thausing, Anton Schwartz and A.H. Bauer, Philadelphia 1882, pages 748-751