UK Beer exports to South America in 1898

The final post in this series looks at the UK's smallest export market: South America. There's a simple reason it took so little British beer. There was only one part, with a very small population, ruled by the British.

Yet Guyana still manages to be number two in the quantity of UK beer taken. Beaten only by Brazil. It may seem odd that Guyana took so much beer from Scotland. But it makes sense, when you think that it was culturally part of the Caribbean. Where Scottish beer was very popular. As we saw in an earlier post. The rest of South America only imported 251 barrels combined.

The countries on the East Coast of the continent - Chile, Peru and Ecuador - took bugger all UK beer. Not really surprising, given how mush trouble it was to get there by sea. All of them were importing less than the Falkland Islands. Where almost no-one lived.

Only Brazil was a significant market for UK beer. Still not that much, really. But more than a third of the total for the whole continent. At a value of just under 69 shillings a barrel, it can't have been that strong.

I might have expected Argentina to be keener on British beer. But they only bought a little over 1,000 barrels. 

UK Beer exports to South America in 1898
Destination	From England.		From Scotland.		From the U.K.
	Quantity.	Declared Value.	Quantity.	Declared Value.	Quantity.	Declared Value.
	Barrels	£	Barrels	£	Barrels	£
British Guiana	768	3,076	3,045	13,432	3,813	16,598
French Guiana	35	106	-	-	35	106
Dutch Guiana	169	619	-	-	169	619
Republic of Colombia	908	3,092	106	481	1,074	3,573
Venezuela	121	394	38	161	159	555
Ecuador	5	16	5	39	10	55
Peru	295	1,261	3	15	298	1,276
Chili	291	1,118	84	359	375	1,477
Brazil	4,460	15,305	14	118	4,474	15,423
Uruguay	114	407	1	5	115	412
Argentine Republic	1,156	4,719	-	-	1,156	4,719
Paraguay	8	23		-	8	23
Falkland Islands	496	1,679	-	-	496	1,679
Total	8,826	31,815	3,296	14,610	12,182	46,515
Source:
The Brewers' Journal vol. 35 1899, June 15th 1899, page 344.
Note:
Year ending 30th September 1898.

 

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1904 Tetley XX

Tetley’s brewhouse use of Xs is dead confusing. After the four X Ales, we now have an XX.

Is this Tetley’s strongest Mild Ale? I’m not totally sure. True, it’s parti-gyled with X3 Mild. But I’ve seen beers marketed as Strong Ales or Burton Ales that were parti-gyled with Mild Ales. Does it matter if it was sold as Old Ale/Strong Ale or Mild Ale? Not really.

Not much to discuss about the recipe, as this was brewed together with the X3 above. Just over 100 barrels of each were in the parti-gyle. Which is a decent quantity for stronger beers. Though there were fewer brews than for the weaker Mild Ales.

Being stronger than X3, the colour is darker. Hitting a classic Dark Mild colour of around 20 SRM.
 

1904 Tetley XX
pale malt	5.25 lb	41.58%
mild malt	5.50 lb	43.56%
No. 3 invert sugar	1.75 lb	13.86%
Caramel 1000 SRM	0.13 lb	0.99%
Fuggles 120 mins	2.50 oz
Goldings 30 mins	2.50 oz
Goldings dry hops	1.00 oz
OG	1072
FG	1017
ABV	7.28
Apparent attenuation	76.39%
IBU	53
SRM	21
Mash at	151º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	60º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale Timothy Taylor

 

Let's Brew - 1904 Tetley X2

And here we are with the non-pale version of X2. Quite different from X2 Pale but also not the same as X1.

What’s the difference? Grits. While X and X1 both contain a very high proportion of grits. While X2 has none. In its place, there’s rather more mild malt. Almost as much mild malt as pale malt. Along with some sugar. All in all, a rather simple grist.

The hopping is much heavier than in X1: 7lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt compared to 4 lbs. That’s quite a big difference. Though it’s well short of the 12.5 lbs per quarter which graced Tetley’s Pale Ale.

And what were those hops? Worcester, Kent and Mid-Kent. All from the 1903 harvest. 

1904 Tetley X2
pale malt	5.25 lb	44.42%
mild malt	5.00 lb	42.30%
brown sugar	1.50 lb	12.69%
Caramel 1000 SRM	0.07 lb	0.59%
Fuggles 120 mins	1.75 oz
Goldings 30 mins	1.75 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.50 oz
OG	1057
FG	1014
ABV	5.69
Apparent attenuation	75.44%
IBU	41
SRM	14
Mash at	151º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	60º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale Timothy Taylor

 

 

 

Lost pubs

There's much lamentation nowadays when a pub is lost. A sad day when last orders really are the last orders.

Pubs are seen as community assets. Generally, a good thing. Worthy of protection and preservation.

But that wasn't always like that. Go back 120 years and there were many who considered pubs so irredeemably evil that they needed to be stamped out. Unfortunately, many such men served as licensing magistrates. With the power to arbitrarily refuse or remove a licence. A power they weer only too happy to abuse.

In 1902, Farnham licensing magistrates decided to refuse the renewal of the licences of nine of the town's 45 pubs. For no other reason than that they thought there were too pubs. Not then they were dens of crime, unsafe, insanitary, insolvent or anything else. Just some magistrates wanted to eliminate as many pubs as possible.

A delicensed pub was worth a fraction of its value as a pub. Especially a fully-licensed pub (one that could sell both beer and spirits). Meaning a destruction of capital for the brewer. This threat led to a fall in the price of a pubs. As a big chunk of a brewer's capital was tied up in pubs, this fall in the value of their tied estate led some to being overcapitalised. Some marked down their shares from £10 to £1. The economic impact of closures was greater than just the loss of pubs.

Between 1870 and 1914 there was a 25% fall in the number of on-licences in England and Wales. Despite a considerable growth in the population, which rose from 31.5 million in 1871 to 46 million in 1914.
 
I'll finish with some numbers. 

Number of pubs in England and Wales 1879 - 1914
Date	Full	Beer / wine	Total Pubs
1870	68,789	49,396	118,185
1875	69,184	43,884	113,068
1880	69,112	49,597	118,709
1881	68,632	38,309	106,941
1885	67,822	37,278	105,100
1890	67,315	36,498	103,813
1893	67,028	35,809	102,837
1895	66,750	35,351	102,101
1895			103,341
1900			102,189
1905			99,478
1910	64,129	28,355	92,484
1914	62,104	25,556	87,660
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1912, page 162.
Brewers' Almanack 1971, page 83.

Let's Brew - 1904 Tetley K

I’m pretty convinced now that this is a type of Pale Ale. Specifically, a Light Bitter. It does, after all, have the classic 1045º

There have been a couple of changes to K since 1888. For a start, it’s lost 4º of gravity. Which is sort of what you would expect. There was a general downward trend in gravities in this period.

The grist has also changed, moving away all malt by including some No. 2 invert sugar. Though the malts remain a combination of pale and mild malt.

For a Pale ale, the hopping rate was relatively light, at 7.75 lbs per quarter (336 lbs). Which was slightly less than the strongest Mild Ales, X3 and XX.

As for the hops, they were all English. Worcester from the 1902 harvest and Kent from 1902 and 1903. 

1904 Tetley K
pale malt	5.25 lb	55.26%
mild malt	3.00 lb	31.58%
No. 2 invert sugar	1.25 lb	13.16%
Fuggles 120 mins	1.50 oz
Goldings 30 mins	1.50 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.50 oz
OG	1045
FG	1008
ABV	4.89
Apparent attenuation	82.22%
IBU	38
SRM	7
Mash at	153º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	60º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale Timothy Taylor

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1904 Tetley X

At this point, Tetley had two parallel sets of Mild Ales. The standard ones and ones with the suffix “Pale”. This is one of the former.

You might have expected this to be similar to the pale version, just with more caramel. But it isn’t. The grist is, in reality, rather different. For a start, around a third of it consists of grits. Something totally absent from the pale version. It seems to substitute for a good chunk of the mild malt.

The sugar is different, too. “M. Brazilian” rather than the “RC(3)” in the pale. I’ve interpreted it as being a type of raw cane sugar. There’s also rather more caramel in this version.

There’s just a single type of Kent hops. I’ve guessed Fuggles. Which seems fair enough for a Mild. At a lower hopping rate than for Pale: 4.25 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt compared to 5.75 lbs.

1904 Tetley X
pale malt	2.50 lb	31.33%
mild malt	1.50 lb	18.80%
grits	2.67 lb	33.46%
brown sugar	1.25 lb	15.66%
Caramel 1000 SRM	0.06 lb	0.75%
Fuggles 120 mins	0.75 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	0.75 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.25 oz
OG	1039
FG	1009
ABV	3.97
Apparent attenuation	76.92%
IBU	19
SRM	12
Mash at	149º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	61º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale Timothy Taylor

 

Beanes' Patent Grist (part four)

Yet more on that enigmatic adjunct, Beanes’ Patent Grist. This time, in the form of an advertisement from Beanes themselves.

You can see what the producer claimed its useful properties.

"Advantages Obtainable by the employment of BEANES' PATENT GRIST.
(1)    Increased Extract.
(2)    Sound Beers of Brilliant and Persistent Condition. 

Purity.—Beanes’ Patent Grist is manufactured by a process which is a guarantee of freedom from any deleterious substance. We guarantee every consignment, and the Patent Grist is not only regularly analysed and tested in our own Laboratory, but other analysts are employed to regularly examine the material for us. The Patent Grist is manufactured from the finest selected rice, thoroughly kiln dried, and free from mould and unsound ferment germs. Unlike maize, it contains no appreciable amount of oil, and thus will not impart to Beers, when kept, any peculiar or objectionable flavour. Beers brewed with the Patent Grist are of better quality than those produced with maize, and improve by keeping.

Finished Beer.— Ales which are brewed with from 10 to 25 per cent, or more of Beanes’ Patent Grist are, even in the fermenting vessel just prior to racking, much cleaner than other Beers, while in cask they take the finings in a few hours, go “Star” brilliant, and retain their brilliancy. Many brewing firms who have been employing the Patent Grist for years, have not, during that time, had a complaint of their Pale Ales being cloudy and refusing to fine. These Beers will remain brilliant in the coldest weather, not becoming hazy like those produced with other materials less carefully manufactured. Beers brewed with not less than 10 per cent, of the Patent Grist (taken on total materials used) are not affected by heat or cold so far as brilliancy is concerned, provided, of course, the barley malts also employed are of medium quality. The Patent Grist contains a large proportion of “Dextrin,” the Beers do not “run down” in cask, the final gravity being almost permanent, while the condition produced remains persistent until the Beer is consumed, a tenacious head also being usual through the “Dextrin” present in the Ale. Sick Frets are usually prevented by the use of the Patent Grist, since the Beers do not contain an excess of changeable albuminous matter. If it is found at any time that Beers brewed with 10 per cent, of the Patent Grist do not remain brilliant in cold weather after fining, but develop a haze, it is due to hop resins or an excess of proteids in the Beer. In such case a good remedy is to increase the percentage of the Patent Grist employed until the excess of low type albuminous matter is sufficiently reduced when the difficulty will disappear, especially if the Beers are got into good condition before being fined.

Prices on Application.
E. BEANES & CO., Hackney Wick, London, N.E."
"A Treatise of Practical Brewing and Malting" by Frank Thatcher, The Country Brewers' Gazette, 1905, advertisement.

It's much the same as Frank Thatcher wrote. Boosting extract, aiding clarification and adding body. It sounds wonderful stuff.

Which has me wondering. If it's that wonderful, why haven't I found it in any other brewing records? I've looked through the records of dozens of breweries and I'm pretty sure Cairnes are the first where it's popped up.

Brewing in Belgium

The last set of bosts about 19th-century Belgian brewing went down well. So here's another, rather smaller, article.

Though this one isn't quite as snide, it does point out the ridiculous nature of the Belgian tax system

"Brewing in Belgium.
Brewing is one of the most important branches of Belgian industry, and the average annual quantity of beer manufactured in the country amounts to about 105,668,000 gallons. Notwithstanding such a relatively large production, Belgium exports a very small quantity of beer. The introduction into France of the light and cheap beer produced in Belgium is prevented by the French customs tariff laws, which do not establish any distinction for any particular quality of beer imported, but prescribe a fixed rate of duty of four cents. per gallon. Besides this, the Belgian excise duties hinder the manufacture of strong and well-fermented beer. The Revenue tax being levied according to the size of the mashing tubs employed, the brewers are interested in getting the most they can from the mash, and they neglect the quality in order to obtain the quantity; yet, considering the advantages placed at its disposal, it is believed that Belgium would be able to compete with any other nation, if there was a thorough fiscal reform. From England beer is exported to the amount of two millions sterling. Brewing is an industry which in Belgium contributes a good deal to the advancement of the national fortune and to the physical development of the working community. Throughout the country there are about 2,700 breweries, which produce annually 214,821,687 gallons of beer. "
Holmes' Brewing Trade Gazette - Friday 01 April 1881, page 9.

This is something modern drinkers might be surprised by: "Belgian excise duties hinder the manufacture of strong and well-fermented beer". Nowadays Belgium is associated with strong beers, but that wan't the case in the past. Almost all Belgian beer was pretty weak in the 19th century.

The numbers for Belgian beer production don't seem to match up. First it lists 105,668,000 gallons, then later 214,821,687. The later number, which is the ewquivalent of 5,967,269 barrels looks like the correct figure. As a very similar number is confirmed by another source.

To put that Belgin beer production figure into context, here are the numbers for some neighbouring countries:

Beer production in 1880 (barrels)
UK	30,742,649
Belgium	5,635,790
France	5,048,970
Germany	23,638,720
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1928, page 109.
European Statistics 1750-1970 by B. R. Mitchell, 1978, page 283.

It's amazing that Belgium, a tiny country, produced more beer than France. And most of that French beer was produced jsut south of the Belgian border.