Brewing in Argentina (part five)

It's time to finally say farewell to Argentina with the final post in this series. Which has spanned the time I was actually in Argentina, having a really good cough.

This time we're looking at how beer was packaged. At the time, there were only two options: bottles and casks. And both were employed.

The Argentine beer is put up in bottles and barrels, the retailers in the larger towns being supplied mainly in barrels. Shipments in quantities to the interior are occasionally made in barrels also, the beer being, kept cool by means of ice. The more general way of shipping the beer to a distance, however, is in closed cases containing four dozen bottles. 
The Brewers' Journal vol. 35 1899, January 15th 1899, pages 46 - 47.

Large settlements got casks and the countryside got casks. Pretty obvious, that. I wonder how draught beer was served. Was it with CO2 or air pressure? And how on earth could I find out?

A personal observation here. I noticed that in non-specialist beer places, while they served draught beer, quite a lot of people were drinking bottles. That's usually a sign of customers not trusting draught beer and resorting to bottles as a safer option.

Empty barrels and staves for barrel making are admitted free of duty. The value of the casks, barrels, and staves imported into the Argentine during 1895 was £43,598, these goods to the value of £17,035 being imported from the United States and to the value of £8,510 from Belgium. Germany sent them in to the value of £5,164. 
The Brewers' Journal vol. 35 1899, January 15th 1899, pages 46 - 47.

It sounds like a lot of the casks were imported or made from imported wood. Much of it from the USA. Presumably, American oak, then. But, if they were going for the continental practice of lining casks, taint from the wood wouldn't have been a problem. I'm a bit surprised by Belgium as a source. I can't recall there being forests of oak there.

The importation of glass bottles of all kinds fell off from a valuation of £70,078 in 1896 to £60,334 in 1897. Most of these goods were obtained from Germany, whose share of the trade amounted to £42,503, Belgium ranking next with £9,000. The amount purchased from the United States amounted to £2,026. The duty on glass bottles is 25 per cent, ad valorem. The machinery used in the breweries is nearly all of French manufacture. A little of it is from Germany. Machinery generally pays a duty of 10 per cent. ad valorem when it exceeds a value of £20.
The Brewers' Journal vol. 35 1899, January 15th 1899, pages 46 - 47.

Interesting that there was no import duty on casks, but there was on bottles. The sources were the same as for most brewing-related items: the USA, Germany and Belgium. Which makes it all the weirder that the machinery mostly came from France.