Dutch Pils before WW II

Access to the Heineken Gravity Book has prompted me to expand the section about the Netherlands in "Blitzkrieg!". I'm finding it a useful insight into what happened on the other side of the conflict. In some ways it's a mirror image of what happened in the UK. While in Holland things went downhill quickly after the summer of 1942, in the UK beer strengths remained the same in the second half of the war. Unlike in WW I.

Heineken Pils was about dead on average for Holland. Though there was a surprising degree of variation amongst rival beers, especially in terms of ABV.

The gravities are mostly pretty similar – there’s only 0.66º Plato between the highest and the lowest. Yet, due to huge variance in the degree of attenuation, there’s a difference of over 1% ABV. Due to crappy attenuation, Phoenix Pils was barely over 4% ABV. Hardly stronger than Heineken Lagerbier.

Dutch Pils before WW II
Date	Year	Brewer	Town	OG Plato	FG Plato	ABV	App. Atten-uation	Colour
14th Dec	1939	Amstel	Amsterdam	11.87	2.20	5.10	82.17%	0.58
14th Dec	1939	Oranjeboom	Rotterdam	11.81	2.42	4.93	80.26%	0.68
14th Dec	1939	Phoenix	Amersfoort	11.45	3.59	4.08	69.61%	0.49
14th Dec	1939	ZHB	Den Haag	11.85	3.58	4.30	70.77%	0.52
14th Dec	1939	Drie Hoefijzers	Breda	11.94	3.12	4.64	74.77%	0.43
14th Dec	1939	Van Vollenhoven	Amsterdam	11.69	3.08	4.51	74.54%	0.85
14th Dec	1939	Grolsch	Groenlo	12.01	2.82	4.81	77.36%	0.53
30th Jan	1940	Bavaria	Lieshout	12.11	2.22	5.36	82.38%	0.5
		Average		11.84	2.88	4.72	76.48%	0.57
Source:
Rapporten van laboratoriumonderzoeken naar producten van Heinekenbrouwerijen in binnen- en buitenland en naar producten van andere brouwerijen held at the Amsterdamse Stadsarchief, document number 834 - 1794.