How much of each type of beer did a DDR brewery brew?

My new favorite book, "Die Brau- und Malzindustrie in Deutschland-Ost zwischen 1945 und 1989", is packed full of information. Loads of stuff about the organisation of the industry, raw materials, research and all sorts of technical information. But almost nothing about the beer produced.

When I first heard about the book I had two thoughts. That it could provide loads of information for my putative book on DDR beer. And that it might make my book redundant. On closer observation, it became clear that the focus of my book would be very different.

To my surprise, the VLB book doesn't even cover the standards documents, such as TGL 7764, which define the characteristics of each type of beer. While I lean very heavily on these documents. As well as Kunze's "Technologie Brauer und Mälzer", another of my favourite books.

In the section describing individual breweries in the VLB book, there is sometimes a mention of the beers brewed. Though, in many cases, it doesn't seem to be an exhaustive list. The most useful is for the Diamant brewery in Magdeburg. Which, very usefully, seems to be a full list and gives the quantities brewed.

Unsurprisingly, as it was the most popular style, most of the beer brewed by Diamant was Helles. Almost three-quarters of their output, in fact. A long way behind, in second place, was Pilsner. Those two beers combined accounted for 90% of the beer produced. In third place was Einfachbier Dunkel, with just a 5% share.

The two strong beers, Bock and Porter, were produced in very small quantities. Between the two of them, only around 6,000 hl were brewed. Less than 3% of total output.

The average gravity of all the beer Diamant brewed was 11.6º Plato. Just a shade over the gravity of Helles. That's around 1046º. Which is 9º higher than average UK gravity at the time. Which I find interesting.

How typical was the Diamant brewery? It's hard to say. Some breweries, such as those brewing for export, were more specialised, producing primarily, or even exclusively, Pilsner. These numbers do, at least, give us an idea of what a reasonably-sized regional brewery was brewing.

Diamant Brauerrei Magdeburg output in 1960
Beer	OG º Plato	hl	%
Einfachbier dunkel	6	12,024	5.20%
Vollbier Hell	11.5	170,990	74.01%
Deutsches Pilsner	13	37,561	16.26%
Weißer Bock	16	4,686	2.03%
Deutscher Porter	18	1,474	0.64%
Doppelkaramelbier	12	4,304	1.86%
Average/Total	11.6	231,039
Source:
Die Brau- und Malzindustrie in Deutschland-Ost zwischen 1945 und 1989, VLB, 2016, page 253.