I can't help myself. When I come across such lovely plump. ripe numbers, I can't help but harvest them. It's a sickness.
Consumption per capita, which increased greatly during the war, fell back to below the pre-war level once the nastiness was over.
You may be asking yourselves: how is this possible when beer production was higher than in 1939? It’s because Holland was exporting considerable quantities of beer. By the 1950s, around 30% of total output. This offset Dutch drinkers falling out of love with beer.
Exports were far greater, both in absolute terms and in as a percentage of output after the war. Holland quickly transformed itself into one of the world’s major beer exporters. By 1950, it had gained the no. 1 spot. A position it still held in the early 2000s.
| Dutch per capita beer consumption (litres) | |||
| year | total population | 18-65 year olds | consumption |
| 1938 | 8,684,082 | 5,119,701 | 25.30 |
| 1939 | 8,781,273 | 5,200,407 | 27.36 |
| 1940 | 8,878,611 | 5,278,522 | 33.42 |
| 1941 | 8,965,484 | 5,349,754 | 43.21 |
| 1942 | 9,041,986 | 5,410,625 | 39.11 |
| 1943 | 9,102,410 | 5,446,574 | 42.61 |
| 1944 | 9,174,432 | 5,476,661 | 34.20 |
| 1945 | 9,262,298 | 5,523,879 | 21.24 |
| 1946 | 9,423,480 | 5,595,678 | 31.98 |
| 1947 | 9,629,275 | 5,668,764 | 28.27 |
| 1948 | 9,800,155 | 5,739,485 | 22.85 |
| 1949 | 9,955,594 | 5,812,519 | 17.36 |
| 1950 | 10,115,527 | 5,886,761 | 18.17 |
| 1951 | 10,264,511 | 5,953,960 | 18.26 |
| 1952 | 10,581,987 | 5,995,624 | 18.91 |
| 1953 | 10,455,651 | 6,050,000 | 21.41 |
| 1954 | 10,550,737 | 6,100,000 | 23.50 |
| Source: | |||
| De Nederlandse Brouwindustrie in Cijfers, by Dr. H. Hoelen, Centraal Brouwerij Kantoor, 1955, held at the Amsterdam City Archives, page 51. | |||
Do you have any sense how liquor availability affected any of this? I wonder whether distilling was diverted for military or war industry purposes, for example, and how quickly liquor came back on the market to compete with beer.
ReplyDeleteWhere were the exports going to, do you know?
ReplyDeleteThese numbers seem incredibly low--the Netherlands now consumes 79.3 liters per capita according to Wikipedia (2019 data), whereas these numbers would put them at around the level of China or Thailand.
ReplyDeleteWell, it looks like the Dutch had a greatly increased thirst for beer between 1939 and 1944.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteMichael Foster,
See today's post putting those numbers into context.
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2021/12/beer-consumption-per-capita-1937-1954.html
It's only in the 1960s and 1970s that Holland became a major beer-drinking country.
Rob Sterowski,
ReplyDeletedisappointingly, the numbers aren't broken down by country. While imports are.
Having seen Heineken records from the period, I'd say a high percentage to the USA and quite a lot to the UK. Hang on. I have the UK imports by country. 9,560 barrels in 1954, so around 16,000 hl.