Materials used in brewing in the USA 1915 - 1920

We’re going to be having a tabletastic time again. You guessed it. I can’t be arsed to write many words.

My thanks to Jess Kidden (aka Steve) for sending me a ginormous table of this stuff. Just the sort of thing I can get my teeth into. I’ll be pestering with you these numbers for a while.

Right, let’s have the first table.

Materials used in brewing in the USA 1915 - 1920 (lbs)
YEAR	PRODUCTION (BARRELS)	MALT	C0RN AND CORN PRODUCTS	RICE	OTHER GRAINS	SUGAR AND SYRUPS	OTHER MATERIALS
1915	59,808,210	2,141,723,104	604,890,901	167,750,177	145,697,970	109,630,425	68,880,530
1916	58,633,624	1,961,254,980	650,745,703	141,249,292	113,712,782	77,068,573	24,756,974
1917	60,817,379	2,770,964,606	666,401,619	125,632,269	204,089,800	115,838,410	17,573,893
1918	50,266,216	1,227,301,254	459,842,338	78,942,550	68,693,042	64,930,019	5,491,879
1919	27,712,648	854,329,231	112,969,071	17,356,242	25,780,394	54,502,845	4,803,123
1920	9,231,280	292,423,712	48,551,910	9,357,668	483,477	23,354,072	4,822,391
Source:
Various editions of the "The Brewers Almanac"

Nice numbers, but they make more sense converted to percentages:

Materials used in brewing in the USA 1915 - 1920 (%)
YEAR	MALT	C0RN AND CORN PRODUCTS	RICE	OTHER GRAINS	SUGAR AND SYRUPS	OTHER MATERIALS
1915	66.13%	18.68%	5.18%	4.50%	3.39%	2.13%
1916	66.06%	21.92%	4.76%	3.83%	2.60%	0.83%
1917	71.04%	17.09%	3.22%	5.23%	2.97%	0.45%
1918	64.42%	24.14%	4.14%	3.61%	3.41%	0.29%
1919	79.86%	10.56%	1.62%	2.41%	5.09%	0.45%
1920	77.16%	12.81%	2.47%	0.13%	6.16%	1.27%
Source:
Various editions of the "The Brewers Almanac"

As you can see, malt made up on average about two-thirds of the grist. Which is similar to what we saw after the repeal of Prohibition. I wonder if the fall in percentage of maize and rice and increase in sugar was connected with the war.

I know what you young’uns like: hops. So here’s US hop usage in the same period:

Hop usage in the USA 1915 - 1920
YEAR	HOPS	HOPS LBS./ BBL.
1915	38,839,294	0.65
1916	37,451,610	0.64
1917	41,958,753	0.69
1918	33,481,415	0.67
1919	13,924,650	0.41
1920	6,440,894	0.7
Source:
Various editions of the "The Brewers Almanac"

Not sure if that tells us very much. So let’s compare it to the UK:

Hop usage in the UK 1914 - 1920
year	bulk barrels	hops( lbs)	hops lbs/  Imperial barrel	hops lbs/  US barrel
1914	36,162,273	62,655,438	1.73	1.24
1915	34,765,780	52,323,711	1.51	1.08
1918	19,085,043	29,499,261	1.55	1.11
1919	23,264,533	41,183,160	1.77	1.27
1920	34,776,258	56,351,680	1.62	1.16
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1928, page 110
Brewers' Almanack 1928, page 111
Brewers' Almanack 1955, page 62

What surprised me there is how little hop usage went down, despite gravities plummeting in this period. But one point is clear: American beers were much more lightly hopped that British ones. Oh, and notice how more hops in absolute terms were used in the UK.

And that’s it. Loads more to come, though.