UK beer imports 1895 - 1897

As we've been looking at beer exports, we may as well look at imports, too.

There are a couple of things to be careful about. First, it's packages rather than a volume. Secondly, just because the beer was dispatched from a port in Belgium or Holland, it doesn't necessarily mean that the beer was brewed there. Much likely came from somewhere else, most likely Germany.

Though the beer shipped from Copenhagen probably did come from Denmark. And I think it's safe to assume anything coming from New York had been brewed in the USA. I'm shocked to see that any beer at all was imported from the US. The stuff coming from Copenhagen was probably mostly Carlsberg and Tuborg.

The beer itself was probably almost all Lager. That was about all that was imported into the UK. Top-fermenting styles were provided by domestic breweries.

Note that more than half of the imports came in via London. Not really surprising: London waws a massive port and much closer to the Continent than Liverpool, Dublin or Glasgow. I'd guess that the same was also true for exports. Though maybe not to quite the same extent.

Total importations of beer into the United Kingdom:—
From	London	Liverpool	Hull	Harwich	O.E Ports	Dublin.	Clyde &c.	Total
	pkgs.	pkgs.	pkgs.	pkgs.	pkgs.	pkgs.	pkgs.	pkgs.
Hamburg	7,885	3,977	2,215	700	1,604	457	908	17,746
Bremen	20,827	1,075	1,351	-	-	-	3,525	27,078
Rotterdam	18,593	171	4,129	11,183	725	9,098	1,831	45,730
Antwerp	4,574	732	18	4,576	672	-	3	10,575
Amsterdam	14,718	282	5,655	-	2,754	-	3,064	26,473
Copenhagen	1,882	105	2,033	-	-	-	5,275	9,296
Christiania	154	-	618	-	14	-	66	852
New York	100	46	-	-	-	-	50	195
Ostend	4,934	-	-	-	-	-	-	4,934
Totals,1897	73,667	6,388	16,019	16,459	5,769	9,555	15,022	142,879
Do. 1896	53,257	10,179	13,468	14,026	4,997	8,250	14,655	129,442
Do. 1895.	55,429	11,868	11,775	17,082	4,079	8,282	14,130	122,645
Source:
"The Brewers' Journal, 1898", page 64.

Here are the numbers in bulk barrels:

UK beer imports 1895 - 1897 (bulk barrels)
1895	1896	1897
44,399	45,000	45,752
Source:
Dundee Evening Post - Monday 01 April 1901, page 2.

As 1 package seems to equate to about a third of a barrel, here's are the bulk barrels for each point of origin:

From	bulk barrels
Hamburg	5915.33
Bremen	9,026
Rotterdam	15,243.33
Antwerp	3,525
Amsterdam	8,824.33
Copenhagen	3,098.67
Christiania	284
New York	65
Ostend	1,644.67

It's not a huge amount of beer.