Ny Carlsberg beers in 1928-1929

I've been too diligent in collecting brewing records. That's how I excuse myself for the mountain of unprocessed ones. Including a hillock of Carlsberg logs. Our perhaps I'm just a lazy git? I'll let you decide.

Ever since I built up a backlog, I give priority to transcribing records which are relevant to a current project. That ruled out anything that wasn't in the time slot 1938 to 1948. After a lifetime and a half of toil, I finally finished off William Younger. I suspect most of it a waste of time. Dead handy for my birthday recipe thing, though. Lots and lots of different dates.

Wandering a bit off the path there. It was years back (May 2015, according to the photos) when I visited the Carlsberg archives. I photographed 20 brewing books from Ny Carlsberg, spanning 1867 to 1934. Quite a lot of stuff. Which would take years to fully process.

There's a good reason I'm looking at them now.  I'm writing a talk on interwar European Lager. Carlsberg is a great example. Getting to use my research here as well makes it a win-win. For me, at any rate. Probably depends on how number-obsessed you are.

One word of warning: the FGs are a guess. I've a couple of analyses of Carlsberg's beers from around this time and they're around 75% apparent, so that's what I've gone with here. It could have been lower for the two dark beers and the porter.

As far as I can make out, Carlsberg brewed six different beers: three Pilsners, a Lagerbier, an Export and a Porter. Not a massive range. If these were German beers, I'd call the middle two Dunkles Lagerbier and Dunkles Export.

The standard Pilsner, which was by far the most-brewed of Carlsberg's range, is weaker than you would expect: under 11º Plato. Checking back through older logs, I saw that it was 12.9º in 1895, 12.6º in 1901, but only 10.9º in 1910. It wasn't WW I, as I suspected, that pushed the gravity down. 

Export Pilsner is simply the same strength as the 1895 standard Pilsner. Looks like Carlsberg lowered the strength of the beer domestically and kept on brewing the old version for export.

Ny Pilsner (New Pilsner) looks like it's fitting into some sort of price class:

"The beers with less than 2.25 per cent alcohol show an even greater increase. The new Pilsener for instance increasing from Kr. 7.5 to 24.25 ore per bottle (about 0.75d. to 2.5d.) and from Kr. 16 to Kr. 60 per hectolitre in cask (or 26s. 3d. to 98s. 6d. per barrel)."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 27, Issue 1, January 1921, pages 26 - 27.

This confirms that Ny Pilsner was a tax category:

Average Original Gravities of Danish Beers 1914 - 1920
Year ending September 30th	1915	1916	1917	1916	1919	1920
Lager beer	1052	1051	1048	1045
Pilsener beer	1044	1044	1041.5	1032	1038	1038
Stout, tax class I	1076	1076	1072
Stout, tax class II	1068	1068	1065	1058	1055	1056
Munich beer	1056	1056	1055
Export beer	1052	1050	1049.5
New Pilsener, tax class II	1032	1032	1032	1030	1031	1031
Source: Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 27, Issue 1, January 1921, page 27.

You may have noticed the eccentric colour scale used by Carlsberg. The higher the number, the paler the colour. How mad is that?

Lagerol and Export are both dark, but how dark? I'd guess 12-15 SRM. When we get to the recipe next time, I'll explain exactly why I'm guessing that.

By far the most heavily hopped of the beers, in terms of hops per 100 kg of malt, is Ny Pilsner. Probably to cover up how watery it was. Amongst the other beers, Export Pilsner is a little heavier on the hops. As the strongest beer by quite a way, it's no surprise that Porter has by far the most hops per hectolitre.

In general, the darker beers were boiled longer, the exception being Export Pilsner.

Ny Carlsberg beers in 1928-1929
Year	Beer	Style	OG Plato	FG Plato	ABV	App. Attenua-tion	kg hops/ 100 kg	hops kg/hl	boil time (hours)	colour
1929	Ny Pilsner	Pilsner	6.5	1.6	2.56	75.87%	2.63	0.19	1.75	19
1928	Pilsner	Pilsner	10.6	2.6	4.27	76.24%	1.26	0.18	1.75	19
1928	Lagerol I	Lager	10.6	2.6	4.27	76.24%	1.25	0.18	2	5.5
1929	Gammel Carlsberg Exp	Export	12.8	3.2	5.18	75.94%	1.28	0.21	2	5
1928	Exp. Pilsner	Pilsner	12.9	3.2	5.24	76.13%	1.58	0.28	2.25	20
1928	Porter	Porter	18.9	4.7	7.89	76.48%	1.41	0.41	2.5
Source:
Carlsberg brewing record held at the brewery, document number Serie 000000299 000056839.

 

Danish brewing in 1960 - lagering and packaging

It's a sad day. My little series on Danish brewing is drawing to a close. We'll be looking at the final phases of the brewing process.

Starting with one of my favourite processes, lagering. I've seen a fair bit of discussion on homebrewing fora about how long you need to lager and even whether there's any point in bulk lagering at all. I won't claim to understand the science, but from my experience drinking beer, a proper long lagering definitely helps. All the Franconian beers I love get at least two months.

"Lagering.—The green beer was racked to the lager cellar by pumping. The yeast had usually compacted firmly on the floor of the fermenting vessel and it was not appreciably disturbed during racking, so that a retaining collar was rarely necessary. Much mixing of gyles took place in order to obtain a consistent product and also, where the method was in use, to mix yeast types. At this point in the process precipitating agents such as tannic acid were sometimes added.

Cellars were maintained at about 32° F. and the beer was allowed to reach this temperature naturally, standing in tanks which were bunged about a day after filling, either column-wise or singly. Many cellars were vast underground refrigerated passages, but new installations above ground enclosed the tanks in cold rooms, leaving the ends accessible from a working passage at room temperature. Enamelled iron, aluminium and stainless steel were used for lager tank construction, with aluminium now predominant. Pressures were allowed to rise to about 4 lb. per sq. in., which is lower than in Germany where subsequent carbonation is not allowed, and the average storage time was up to 3 months for Pilsner types and 6 months for very strong beers."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, pages 497 - 498.

Blending gyles is typical of big industrial breweries who want to maintain absolute consistency of flavour. For me part of the charm of some beers is that there are slight variations from batch to batch. Makes life more interesting.

The lagering process sounds pretty traditional: gradual cooling to about freezing point and bunging the lagering vessels to allow the beer to carbonate. Though obviously they didn't solely rely on natural carbonation as the Germans did. Funnily enough I know from documents in the Barclay Perkins archives that Harp Lager was bunged and naturally-carbonated in the early 1960's

Now filtration, a vital part of Lager production.

"Filtration and bottling.— In 14 of the 16 breweries visited in Denmark and Germany, the final polishing filtration was given by a pure cotton cellulose pulp filter of the Enzinger type. Pulp polishing was considered essential for stability of the finished beer, in spite of the disadvantage of regenerating and sterilizing the pulp and the possible loss of beer quality. Four of the Danish breweries used a battery of centrifuges for rough filtration, with additional cooling equipment between the centrifuges and the pulp filter; they were not so efficient as kieselguhr rough filters and they thrust more load on to the polisher. For example, a 50-plate pulp filter used after a centrifugal pre-filter passed about 300 brl. before choking whereas 400 brl. were passed after prefiltration by kieselguhr. The sludge from the lager tanks was usually filtered through a cloth filterpress, and the beer recovered was led through the main filtration plant and metered into fresh bright beer."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, page 498.

I've included that for information purposes only I can't claim to understand hardly any of it. My knowledge of filtration methods is close to zero. Not anything I ever bothered with when home brewing. Very efficient of them to recover the beer in the yeast sludge. Better than the disgusting practice of some British breweries of reusing returned beer.

Now they're fizzing the beer up.

"Carbonation took place just before the pulp filtration, and bright-beer tanks were usually glass lined. Two large breweries had a rigorous check on dissolved air before bottling, and any excess over 2 ml. per litre was scrubbed out by bubbling carbon dioxide through the tank. The extent of carbonation was standardized and chill-proofing agents were sometimes added. Bottling lines were always well laid out, with hot water spray pasteurization in bottle commonly applied; the usual practice of a 20-min. hold at 143° F. for a 0.33-litre bottle seemed rather drastic."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, page 498.

I can't really say much about this either. Other than that large breweries were clearly concerned about oxidation and that pasteurisation seems to have been standard. Though that was also true of British bottled beer at the time, with just a handful of exceptions.

Finally, draught and canned beer.

"Keg beer constituted a proportion of the home trade of some breweries, and here pasteurization by complete immersion was favoured for thorough heat transfer and so that leaking kegs could be detected. Export beer in bulk was flash pasteurized. Canning was rather the province of the major concerns, but it was obviously on the increase and at least one firm was preparing to raise its output of canned beer extensively. Standards of stability for beer in bottle were high. Vibration and forcing tests were regularly carried out with, e.g., one type of beer being expected to withstand a temperature of 140° F. for 3 months without throwing an appreciable haze."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, page 498.

I can remember being shocked during my first visit to Copenhagen back in the 1980's at the almost total absence of draught beer. Even in largish city-centre pubs, draught beer was rare, except in British or Irish pubs. It was the only real beer-drinking country where bottles so completely dominated the pub trade. That's one of the many aspects of the Danish brewing scene which have completely changed. Now draught beer is everywhere.

It sounds as if not all breweries really bothered with draught in 1960, but some did. But presumably between 1960 and 1980 even those gave up on it.

Next we'll be looking at German brewing in 1960.

Danish brewing in 1960 - fermentation

Here, as promised, is more about Danish brewing in 1960. We're now as far as fermentation:

"Fermentation.— The essential feature of a lager attenuation is that sufficient residual extract is left to supply the requirements of the secondary fermentation in the lager tank; three methods of achieving this were used. With a single fairly flocculent yeast the primary attenuation was checked about 4° above the limit by cooling, thus giving a day or two less in the fermenting vessel; a typical example was an 8-day fermentation at 48-50° F. Again with a single yeast, the primary fermentation was completed and the necessary residual extract then added as krausening in the lager tank. The third method involved using two strains, powdery and flocculent, which were kept separate in the fermenting vessels, where they attenuated to different levels and were then mixed in the lager tank; the residual extract left by the flocculent yeast was sufficient for the secondary fermentation. A well-balanced pair of mutually flocculating yeasts was required for this process, but it was possible to standardize fermentation time without detriment to the secondary fermentation; this method was found in use both in a large brewery with its own propagating apparatus and in a smaller concern which relied on a commercial supply of yeast."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, page 497.

Now there's something I'd never really considered: the need for extract during the lagering process. It makes sense - how else would the carbonate itself in the tank if there were no fermentation activity occurring. Much like bottle- or cask-conditioning, there are two basic methods of achieving this: stopping primary fermentation at the right point or fermenting all the way out then adding more fermentable material. The latter is safer, as you've more control. When I homebrewed, I never dared rely on having just the right amount of sugar left in the wort. I always primed bottles with sugar.

I was surprised when I compared Barclay Perkins methods with those outlined in the article, that the Danes were fermenting warmer and for a shorter time. Barclay Perkins pitched at 45º and let the temperature rise to a maximum of 49.5º F. Export and Sparkling beer took around two weeks in primary, Harp Lager 8 days.

Barclay Perkins Lager in 1962
Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Attenuation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops oz/brl	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp	max. fermentation temp	length of fermentation (days)
Export	Export	1045.5	1007.7	5.00	83.08%	4.51	11.84	2	45.5º	49.5º	14
Harp Lager	Lager	1035.1	1008.6	3.51	75.50%	3.93	8.40	2	45º	47º	8
Sparkling Beer	Lager	1045.5	1010.0	4.70	78.02%	4.49	12.38	2	45º	49º	15
Source:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/08/276.

 

Barclay Perkins is a good brewery to be using for comparison. Not just because they had a specialist Lager brewhouse. When it opened in the 1920's the first head brewer was a Dane.

The method using two yeast strains seems very fiddly. Not sure I'd want to give it a try. Not when kräusening is so much simpler. Here's something about the primary fermentation vessels:

"The fermenting cellar was usually at 40-45° F. and contained open vessels of aluminium, ebon, enamelled iron or stainless steel, filling being from the bottom through a single filling and racking cock; an armoured rubber hose was often used to connect the vessel to the wort main system, which was usually of copper. Yeast was either injected into the filling main near the vessel or pumped in from the top during collection.
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, page 497.

I'm surprised that they still had open fermenters this late. Though in Franconia that's still the norm, at least among the smaller and medium-sized breweries.

"Both large Copenhagen breweries have recently built multi-storey fermenting blocks with totally enclosed vessels in stainless steel, insulated with 15-cm. layers of cork and mounted in concrete; the exterior is air conditioned to avoid condensation and heat variance in the F.V. Attemperation was by direct ammonia expansion into a single 4-in. pipe running round the vessel just below the beer line. By varying the boiling pressure of the ammonia the minimum temperature difference could be attained between attemperator and beer. Carbon dioxide was collected from these vessels."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, page 497.

He means Carslberg and Tuborg by "Both large Copenhagen breweries". And I see they had closed fermenters. What do they have today? Well nothing because both breweries have closed. Wherever Carlsberg and Tuborg are brewed now, I'm sure it's in conical fermenters.

That's quite different from attemperators in British breweries. Those were a network of small diameter pipes. I would try to describe it in more detail, but It's easier to just show you a photo:

The CO2 being collected was presumably used to carbonate beer. Or soft drinks.

Finally something on yeast:

"One brewery was still using the original Hansen propagators the prototype of which was designed in 1883. Yeast was removed for further build-up about once a week, and the inherent soundness of the method was apparent from the fact that over 300 samples of pitching yeast could usually be obtained from the initial pure culture before deterioration took place.

Yeast washing was widely practised, a modern variation being to sieve the yeast direct from the floor of the fermenting vessel after racking, using a vibrating mesh screen to retain the scum and allow the cleansed yeast to pass through. Smaller breweries re-used the yeast about 12 times, but the larger concerns had more rigorous infection limits; they were able to detect the presence of one cell of Pediococcus in 0-5 g. of pressed yeast and re-pitched only about 6 times. It was interesting to note that Pediococcus was the infecting organism most feared by Continental brewers; lactic rods were rarely encountered."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, page 497.

That's impressive still having a Hansen-style yeast propagator in use almost a century after it was designed. Though there are other bits of kit that have hung around for a long time. A Steel's masher is a good example. That was invented in 1853 and is still in use at many British breweries.

The implication is that British brewers most feared lactobacillus. I wonder why it wasn't common in Danish breweries?

Next time the real fun starts when we get to lagering.

Danish brewing in 1960 - boiling and cooling

We're back with the article on Danish and German brewing in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing. Clearly I find it fascinating because it's all about Lager.

First we have boiling. A truly fascinating topic.

"Wort boiling was usually for 75 min. open and 60 min. under pressure with the propeller on, the coppers being heated by a central high-pressure steam dome and an annular low pressure zone. Hops were added in two batches — at the start of the boil and after pressure had been reduced — in amounts calculated to keep the final isohumulone content of the finished beer constant. Hop rates varied from 5-8 oz. per brl. for Pilsner to 11 oz. for 1080° beer. Hot-break nitration was carried out in a modified mash filter and adjustment to gravity was made in the filtered-wort receiver; cooling to 46° F. was in stainless steel plate coolers with a final brine section. The cold wort was aerated to 5 ml. of dissolved oxygen per litre, and oxygen content was checked in the laboratory by a method involving polarization of a falling mercury electrode, coupled to give a direct galvanometer reading in ml. of oxygen per litre."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, page 496.

Not sure I completely understand that. Pretty sure I've never come across a British brewer that boiled both open and closed for the same beer. I certainly wouldn't have expected a brewery whose main products were Pale Lagers to boil under pressure as that can add colour to the wort. It's also a very long boil - 2.25 hours in total. You can see in the tables below that it's much longer than Whitbread's Ales were boiled - the longest is 75 minutes. Though the two-hour boil time of Barclay Perkins' Lagers is much closer.

Those hopping rates are pretty low. Whitbread's Mild and Brown Ale, though much weaker, were hopped at the top end of the Danish Pilsner range. Even Harp Lager was in a similar range, and Barclay Perkins' other Lagers were much more heavily hopped.

Whitbread Ales in 1960
Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops oz/brl	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp	length of fermentation (days)
Best Ale	Mild	1030.6	1010.0	2.73	67.32%	5.67	11.14	1	1	64º	7
FB	Brown Ale	1033.8	1008.5	3.35	74.85%	5.45	11.68	1	0.75	64º	6
KKKK	Strong Ale	1051.8	1016.0	4.74	69.11%	7.50	24.88	1	1.25	62º	7
PA	Pale Ale	1038.4	1012.0	3.49	68.75%	5.89	14.60	1.08	1	62º	6
WPA	Pale Ale	1035.5	1008.0	3.64	77.46%	8.63	19.97	1.25	1.25	64º	6
Source:
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/01/127.

Barclay Perkins Lager in 1962
Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Attenuation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops oz/brl	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp	max. fermentation temp	length of fermentation (days)
Export	Export	1045.5	1007.7	5.00	83.08%	4.51	11.84	2	45.5º	49.5º	14
Harp Lager	Lager	1035.1	1008.6	3.51	75.50%	3.93	8.40	2	45º	47º	8
Sparkling Beer	Lager	1045.5	1010.0	4.70	78.02%	4.49	12.38	2	45º	49º	15
Source:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/08/276.

 

As for the hop additions, when exactly was the second one? The only explanation that makes sense is that they boiled first under pressure, then open. Otherwise when would the pressure drop? It certainly doesn't sound as if there were any aroma additions.

Now some other strange brewing techniques:

"Brewing procedure in other Danish breweries visited generally resembled that described above, but a common liquor treatment was to soften with lime in the cold and add gypsum to the grist. One large brewery had cut down the saccharification rest (Table I) to 20 min.; a 70-Qr. mash was filtered in lauter tuns, and a speed comparable to the mash filter was achieved by using 4 small tuns together, alternating, since 1956, with a single huge tun of 28 ft. diam. Hot sludge filtration was frequently required after the hop strainer, and a vibrating mesh screen was employed in one case and a centrifuge in another; the typical German open coolship was encountered only once."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, page 496.

There's something else I don't understand - how  the four small tuns and one giant one worked together. If you do, please let me know.

Adding gypsum to the grist would have effectively hardened the water, so why soften it first? Was gypsum being used as a sort of Burtonisation? Yet another point I don't understand. I'm not doing a very good job of explaining this, am I?

Ah, finally something I understand. They didn't use open coolers much in Denmark. I've spent the last couple of years saying that the correct English word is "cooler" and here's someone using coolship. Whatever you call it, one of the reasons its use was retained after the introduction of other cooling methods was that lots of gunk would drop out while wort was in it. hence the need to filter out sludge when one wasn't employed.

Next time we'll be looking at fermentation.

Mashing in Denmark in 1960

We're getting to the real meat of A. J. Mayfield's article of German and Danish brewing. Stuff about the nuts and bolts of brewing.

Unsurprisingly, Mayfield seems to have concentrated his attention on Carlsberg and Tuborg, at the the time the country's largest breweries.

"Brewing.—Both Carlsberg and Tuborg have recently carried out extensive modernization, and it seems probable that the pattern of large-scale brewing in Denmark has now been set for many years to come. Complete standardization in brew types and sizes has been achieved, with each process timed to fit a given number of brews into the 24-hr. working day.

In the Carlsberg brewery, basic simplicity combined with rigorous control at all stages was striven for and, where possible, a control test with easily reproducible numerical limits was employed. The brewing plant was double as far as the plate coolers, with mashes on alternate sides giving a regular run of worts to the fermenting cellers at 2-hr, intervals. With a separate maize mash, this necessitated a third mash-kettle on each side to hold the mash for the final rest before filtration. Ten beers were produced with gravities ranging from 1026° to 1080°; seven of these were pale types with separate maize mashes, and mashing procedure was arranged to keep the schedule shown in Table I.

TABLE I
Mashing Schedule for Pale Malts	Time
Mashing stage	(min.)
In-mash malt at 95° F	15
In-mash maize at 124° F.	-
Maize to boil	40
Maize boiling	20
2-stage addition of maize mash to malt with 10-min. rest at 124° F then raise to 149° F	35
Saccharification rest at 149° F.	60
Pump off decoction	10
Decoction to boil	25
Decoction boiling	25
Return to head mash, raising temperature to 169° F	15
Rest at 169° F. to complete the mash	25
Total	255

TABLE II
Mashing Schedule for Dark Malts	Time
Mashing stage	(min.)
In-mash malt at 124° F	15
Pump off first decoction	5
Decoction to boil	30
Decoction boiling	25
Return to head mash, raising heat to 158° F	15
Rest at 158" F.	20
Pump off 2nd decoction	10
Decoction to boil	25
Decoction boiling	25
Return to head mash, raising temperature to 169° F	15
Rest at 169° F. to complete the mash	65
Total	250

The maize mash contained about 25% of highly diastatic malt to assist in starch liquefaction. Dark beers also conformed to the 4.25-hr. timing, but with a single all-malt mash, and a typical schedule is given in Table II."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, pages 495 - 496.

Carlsberg was obviously running its brewing kit pretty much non-stop. Having new wort ready every two hours is impressive. That's twelve brews a day.

I'm pretty sure both those methods are double decoction. Using a cereal mash as a decoction is a trick Dann used when brewing Younger's No. 1. It worked remarkably well, with the temperatures coming out spot on. Both methods here have three rests, though not exactly the same temperatures. Not sure why the second rest was warmer for the dark malt schedule.

Now for a really fun topic: milling.

"Milling was performed on 5- and 6-roll mills fitted with vibrating screens which gave a good separation of husk, grits and meal. Roller settings were carefully controlled to maintain an average grits diameter of 0.38 mm., which gave best results for extract and filtration with this plant. The grist cases were suspended on weighing bridges coupled to automatic recorders which gave the weight of malt as ground."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, page 496.

I don't feel qualified to make any comment on that.

Now more mashing details:

"For mashing, the required length of liquor was prepared at the prescribed temperature in the kettle, and a simple dry drop of grist was stirred in with the propeller. Temperature recording was continuous on one chart from in-mash to casting, and a master control panel prevented the flow of mash or wort in the wrong direction. The pH was adjusted by standard additions of permanently-maintained lactic mash, followed, if necessary, by a calculated addition of lactic acid; no other liquor treatment was needed for the town's water supply, and the pH of the boiled Pilsner wort was thus maintained between 5.2 and 5.4. With mash-filters for separation of spent grains, a 50-Qr. mash was filtered and sparged in 2.5 hr.
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 66, 1960, page 496.

Heating the water and then adding the grist is very different from how British breweries usually operated. They would use a Steel's masher - a screw which mixes grain and water in the right proportion as they enter the mash tun. Steel's mashers are still common in British breweries.

Interesting that they sometimes used lactic acid to control the pH of the mash. That's something that wouldn't be allowed in Germany because of the Reinheitsgebot. What is that telling us about Carlsberg's water? That it was soft?

Mmm. I seem to have asked more questions and provided few answers.

Boiling next time.

Danish brewing statistics 1899 - 1959

Variety is the price of life, they say. So today I'm giving the Whitbread gravity book a rest. I'm sure the snappy title of this post will have ensnared many of you. How do I think them up?

Until the recent moratorium on book-buying imposed by my wife, I'd been building up a good collection of Swedish titles (mostly by Samuel E. Bring). My Abebook searches for "bryggeri" also popped out a couple of Danish books. Already getting warnings from Dolores, I bought only one: "Bryggerne og de tre store udforgringer" ("Brewers and the three great challenges", if I remember my Danish correctly), an oddly-titled history of the Danish brewers' association.

Brewers' associations are very good at compiling statistics. (Much better than they are a protecting their smaller members' interests.) They're some of my best sources. The Brewers' Almanack, issued annually by the Brewers' Society in Britain is brimming with essential facts. The Deutscher Brauer Bund website is my main reference for modern German statistics. I've already admitted my numbers dependency. These provide my fix.

When I ordered the book, I was hoping that it would have a few numbers in it. It sort of does. Unfortunately in the form of graphs. The numbers below I had to work out with a ruler. The ones for the number of breweries I could get spot on. The hectolitre figures are more imprecise. They could be 50,000 hl out. Or so.