Hop growing in the DDR (part 2)

As promised, more details on hop growing in the DDR.The fledgling industry got off to a slow start in the early 1950s, but by its final years had grown to a decent size.

It would be interesting to see figures for some later years. Because it looks like a plateau was reached in the 1960s. I must have a look in the later editions of Kunze.

There's a note which says that the harvests of 1956, 1960 and 1961 were badly affected by summer thunderstorms. Which I suppose explains the poor yield in those years. I wonder what happened in 1962? Where the yield was even worse than in 1960.

By the 1960s, had the DDR become self-sufficient in hops? Possibly. Hang on. I have the numbers. I have the quantity of beer brewed and I know what the hopping rates were.

The maximum hopping rates for the most popular styles, Vollbier Hell and Deutsches Pilsner, were 240 gm and 350 gm per hectolitre, respectively.The most heavily hopped style, Deutscher Porter, received a maximum of 650 gm per hectolitre. The average hopping rate couldn't have been more than around 300 gm/hl.

By 1959, the DDR was producing just shy of 100 gm of hops per hectolitre of beer brewed. Which by my calculations was around a third of their requirements. Did they eventually manage to achieve self sufficiency? We'll find out in a later post.

DDR beer and hop production 1951 - 1959
year	hl beer	kg hops	gm/hl
1951	5,739,556	0	0
1952	6,991,555	2,500	0.36
1953	8,390,848	29,500	3.52
1954	10,631,354	98,000	9.22
1955	11,772,064	335,000	28.46
1956	11,073,236	294,000	26.55
1957	12,955,326	691,000	53.34
1958	12,884,952	1,014,000	78.70
1959	13,659,064	1,327,000	97.15
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1962, page 54.
Technologie Brauer und Mälzer by Wolfgang Kunze, VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, 2nd edition, 1967, page 43.

Here are the raw hop production figures:

Hop growing in the DDR 1951 - 1965
Year	Area in ha	Production in dt	Production per dt/ha
1951	0	0
1952	6	25
1953	45	295
1954	159	980
1955	444	3,350
1956	687	2,940	4.3
1957	875	6,910	7.9
1958	1,006	10,140	10.1
1959	1,150	13,270	11.6
1960	1,415	12,160	8.6
1961	1,705	9,810	5.8
1962	1,967	14,742	7.5
1963	2,090	26,550	12.7
1964	2,128	26,288	12.3
1965	2,135	20,200	9.4
Source:
Technologie Brauer und Mälzer by Wolfgang Kunze, VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, 2nd edition, 1967, page 43.