UK hopping rates 1914 - 1939

I told you I had more hop numbers. I just had to rummage around in the nether regions of my spreadsheets to find them.

The title is pretty self-explanatory.  I've taken the figures I have for beer production and hop usage, nailed them loosely together and calculated the average quantity of hops used per barrel of beer produced. And I've thrown in the OG and ounces of hops per gravity point so the effect of gravity changes can be removed.

I think it's a pretty nifty table. Especially as it tells me something unexpected. Or rather confirms soemthing I was reluctant to believe. Remember those hop numbers from Barth Reports? There was  one set that showed average hopping rates for various countries. I was sceptical of the UK ones, because it showed the hopping rate after WW I as higher than before it. That couldn't possibly be true, could it? Average OG had declined abourt 25% so logic would demand that the hopping rate had undergone a similar fall. Not true at all.

What makes that increase in hopping even  more surprising, is that the price of hops had more than quadruples between 1914 and 1920:

Price of English hops per cwt.
	£ s. d.
1914	4 3 9
1916	6 14 0
1918	18 15 0
1920	19 10 0
Source:
Brewers' Almanack 1955, page 63.

Here's another way of looking at it:

Fall in OG and hopping 1914 - 1920
	1914	1920	% fall
Average OG	1052.15	1039.41	24.43%
Average hops per barrel	1.73	1.62	6.36%
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1928, p. 110
1914: 1953 Brewers' Almanack 1955, page 62

OG fell 24% but the hopping rate only by 6.%. I'd like to explain it, but have absolutely no idea why this happened.

Surprisingly, the hopping rate per gravity point stayed at close to the 1914 level for most of the 1930's. Not at all what I would have expected.

Here's the full table:

UK hopping rates 1914 - 1939
year	bulk barrels	hops	lbs hops per barrel	Average OG	oz. hops per gravity point
1914	36,162,273	559,423	1.73	1052.15	0.53
1920	34,776,258	503,140	1.62	1039.41	0.66
1922	27,815,249	398,506	1.60	1042.88	0.60
1924	25,927,783	350,428	1.51	1043.04	0.56
1926	25,987,830	355,375	1.53	1043.23	0.57
1928	24,981,731	330,662	1.48	1043.17	0.55
1930	24,488,629	307,289	1.41	1042.90	0.52
1931	22,561,497	277,406	1.38	1042.50	0.52
1932	18,864,711	219,587	1.30	1041.04	0.51
1933	18,931,185	222,868	1.32	1039.52	0.53
1934	20,378,879	233,419	1.28	1040.99	0.50
1935	21,598,179	248,744	1.29	1041.06	0.50
1936	22,207,859	258,300	1.30	1041.02	0.51
1937	23,608,658	270,592	1.28	1041.10	0.50
1938	24,339,360	277,846	1.28	1041.02	0.50
1939	25,691,217	285,715	1.25	1040.93	0.49
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1928, p. 110
Brewers' Almanack 1955, p. 50
Brewers' Almanack 1955, page 62

Next time we'll be seeing what happened during and after WW OO.

Number of breweries 1898 - 2000

Time for some more random statistics. Rather incomplete ones, but still of educational value.

First off, it's the number of breweries per country.What's most obvious is the huge number of breweries in Germany at the end of the 19th century. Those figures don't even cover the whole of Germany: Baden and Alsace-Lorraine are missing. All told, there must have been more than 20,000 breweries.

You can also see that time was crueller to Belgium and France in terms of brewery number reduction, while in the UK and Bavaria brewery numbers had been reduced by a factor of around 10, it was a factor of 30 for Belgium and 25 for France.

The USA has currently at around the same number as in 1900. The only major brewing nation where that's true.

Number of breweries 1898 - 2000
Country	1898	1899	1900	1998	1999	2000
UK	8,072	6,897	6,739	551	498	500
Brausteuergebiet			6,441
Bavaria			6,116	696	684	671
Wurtemburg		6,621	5,818	170	167	169
Belgium	3,143	3,118	3,223		112	113
Turkey		2	3
France		2,546	2,540		80	113
Russia		1,035	1,025
USA		2,390	2,412
total world		40,475	39,542
Sources:
Dundee Courier - Wednesday 13 September 1899, page 2.
Cheltenham Chronicle - Saturday 17 August 1901, page 7.
BBPA Statistical Handbook 2003, p. 92
The Beers of France
Het Brouwersblad June 2004. p.6
Deutscher Brauer-Bund, Bonn
Notes:
USA includes South America and Australia

I thought it would be interesting to look at average output per brewery. You can see that the breweries in the Brausteuergebiet - basically the North of Germany - operated on a larger scale than those in Bavaria and Württemberg.

But they still produced, on average, a third less than British breweries. To put the UK figures into context, around 4,700 of those breweries* were pub breweries making fewer than 1,000 barrels (1,600 hl) a year. Many of the breweries in Württemberg must have operated on a tiny scale.

Beer output and no. of breweries in 1900
	output (hl)	no. breweries	output per brewery
Deutsches Zollgebiet	65,621,000
Brausteuergebiet	39,320,000	6,441	6,105
Bayern	17,739,000	6,116	2,900
Baden	3,095,000
Württemberg	4,128,000	5,818	710
Alsace-Lorraine	1,128,000
UK	60,724,628	6,739	9,011
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1928, p. 110
"Jahrbuch der Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei in Berlin, 1911", p.585-589

* 1928 Brewers' Almanack, page 118.

Beer in India in the 1890's

We've moved on a decade, but I'm still picking twitching silver fish out of my net. This is so much fun.

First, some more handy information about India's local brewing industry.

"BRITISH TROOPS AND BEER
In the matter of beer, British India appears to be tolerably well off, since the brewings for the last five years average an annual production of 5,285,000 gallons, 55 per cent. of which are consumed by the troops, and 45 per cent. by civilians. This does not represent the total quantity absorbed by the army, since an average of 2,819,167 gallons have been imported yearly for the last five years. The industry dates from 1850, when the first brewery was established at Mussooree. Twelve out of the 22 breweries are located in ths Himalayas from Murree to Darjeeling. The largest is at Murree, where about 811,000 gallons were brewed last year. The next largest is at Poona, where the output last year was 795,000 gallons. Nearly one third of the total is brewed in the Punjab. It was for a long time supposed to be impossible to brew in the Plains, but last year the quantity brewed there exceeded 2,000,000 gallons.
Sheffield Independent - Friday 06 September 1895, page 6.

That 5,285,000 gallons of beer brewed is 146,806 barrels. Not an enormous amount for a country the size of India. And more than half of it went to the military. The civilians who drank the rest would mostly also have been Europeans, clerks, officials and the like.

By this time the India brewing industry had been around for more than 40 years, but was still tootling along at quite a small scale. I've converted those output figures into barrels so they make more sense:

Murree 22,528 barrels
Poona 22,083 barrels

In 1890, there were 293 breweries in Britain that brewed more beer than that*.

Before the introduction of artificial refrigeration, there was little option but to brew in the Himalayas wher the air temperature was naturally cool enough. Murree is at an altitude of 2,200 metres - I wonder if that caused any problems in brewing?

The Murree Brewery is - surprisingly as it's now in Pakistan - still going, though it now brews in Rawalpindi. It was founded in 1860 and brewing continued in Murree until the 1920's. The company, even more surprisingly, also makes whisky.

Beer imports continued their upward trend in the 1890's:

Beer imported into India 1891 - 1897
Year	gallons	barrels
1891	2,785,574	77,377.06
1892	2,973,943	82,609.53
1893	3,052,894	84,802.61
1894	2,787,672	77,435.33
1895	2,514,041	69,834.47
1896	3,048,743	84,687.31
1897	3,032,049	84,223.58
Source:
"Statistical abstract for the British Empire, Issue 34", 1897, pages 42-43.

British troops continued to be the main market for Indian-brewed beer, drinking about 50% of production:

"BREWING INDUSTRY BRITISH INDIA.
A memorandum received tha Board Trade, through India Office, states that the quantity of beer brewed in 1901 amounted to 5,558,653 gallons, of about half was bought by army commissariat, the remainder being left for consumption by the civil population, or by soldiers independently of the arrangements under the army contracts with breweries. The average purchases of commissariat for the last five years have amounted to 2,727,163 gallons yearly, average production in the same period having been 5,481,122 gallons.

Fourteen of the breweries are situated at stations the Himalayas from Murree to Darjeeling, and much of the beer is brewed there. A large quantity is also brewed at Rawalpindi. Poona. Bangalore, Jubbapore, and near and Ootacamund and Mandalay. The largest of the breweries is Murree, the Poona brewery standing next. More than one-third of the whole production is brewed the Punjab.

The quantity beer brewed in India and imported is as follows:—Brewed India, 5,558,653 gallons; imported, 3,673,844 gallons.
Western Daily Press - Saturday 07 June 1902, page 9.

Time to pull some of that production information into a table:

Beer brewed in India 1888 - 1891
	Brewed in India. Gallons.	Brewed in India. Barrels.
1888	4,860,282	135,008
average 1890-1894	5,285,000	146,806
1893		179,030
1901	5,558,653	154,407
Sources:
Derby Mercury - Wednesday 26 June 1889, page 7.
Grantham Journal - Saturday 18 August 1894, page 7.
Sheffield Independent - Friday 06 September 1895, page 6.
Western Daily Press - Saturday 07 June 1902, page 9.

You can see that beer production was ridsing along with imports, though even combined they only amounted to 220,000 to 250,000 barrels in the 1890's.




Murree Brewery Co. Ltd.
National Park Road,
Rawalpindi,
Pakistan
Tel:(+92) 051-5567041-7,
Fax: (+92) 051-5584420
E-mails: murbr@cyber.net.pk, murreebrewery@cyber.net.pk
http://www.murreebrewery.com



* 1928 Brewers' Almanack, page 118.

Hops in 1893

More hop statistics, this time courtesy of a Grantham newspaper.

I've always thought of Grantham as the evil twin of Newark, where I grew up. Not that I know Grantham particularly well. I can't have visited the place more than half a dozen times. Once was to  attend a CAMRA meeting. That the pub was serving the original Barnsley Bitter should give some indication of how long ago that was.

Me and Dolores had to wait an hour or two there once on the way back from Skegness. She wasn't impressed. "It makes Newark look exciting." she said.

Sorry for wandering off there. Hops I should be talking about.

What's interesting about this set of numbers is that not just the prodduction but also the consumption of hops is given. You have to be a little careful with figures like these because most hops aren't consumed in the year they're grown, but the following year. So, for example, if 1892 has there had been a bumper crop in the UK, it might well have been self-sufficient in hops, despite growing fewer in 1893 than were used that year.

That said, the UK wasn't self-sufficient and did indeed depend on imports from, amongst others, the USA.

Hops in 1893 (zentner)
	grown	consumed
Great Britain	489,735	594,187
Germany	265,189	417,596
Austria	143,466	135,694
America	418,612	320,533
total		1,696,588
Source:
Grantham Journal - Saturday 18 August 1894, page 7.

This next table shows that Germany wasn't the net importer of hops it appears to be in the first table. The 486,600 zentners uit produced on average exceeds 420,000 or so it needed for brewing. While Austria was a much bigger net exporter than it appeared.

Hop production 1896 - 1900 (zentners of 50 kg)
	1896	1897	1898	1899	1900	average
Germany	510,000	473,000	436,000	581,000	433,000	486,600
UK	453,000	417,000	302,000	661,000	353,000	437,200
Austria	230,000	162,000	186,000	254,000	213,000	209,000
USA	309,000	344,000	339,000	380,000	329,000	340,200
Source:
Barth Hop Report 1910

I think I've still a few hop numbers I've not bothered you with yet. I'll try to dig them out.

Beer in India in the 1880's

I've been trawling the newspaper archives, looking for stuff on brewing in India. I've hauled in a few tasty-looking fish,

Let's start with one from the 1880's:

"The Bombay Government have completed arrangements with a firm of brewers of Kassouli to supply the European troops of Bombay, Poonah, Deolah, Mhow, Ahmednuggur, and Belgaum with 13,000 barrels of beer annually for a period of five years, the firm in question meantime erecting a brewery at Poonah for its production. The consumption by the British troops of malt liquor brewed in India is steadily increasing, while the quantity imported from England for that purpose is yearly diminishing."
Morning Post - Tuesday 02 September 1884, page 5.

13,000 barrels may not sound like a huge amount, but it represents about 10% of the beer brewed in India in the 1880's. The brewery in Poonah quickly grew to one of the largest in India, probably on the back of that contract to supply British troops.


That claim about imports of beer declining just doesn't stand up, I'm afraid.

Beer imported into India 1881 - 1890
Year	gallons	barrels
1881	1,152,678	32,018.83
1882	1,199,395	33,316.53
1883	1,170,554	32,515.39
1884	1,261,444	35,040.11
1885	1,066,444	29,623.44
1886	1,299,408	36,094.67
1887	1,715,638	47,656.61
1888	2,138,518	59,403.28
1889	2,398,580	66,627.22
1890	2,797,965	77,721.25
Source:
"Statistical abstract for the British Empire, Issue 33", 1896, pages 42-43.
"Statistical abstract for the British Empire, Issue 34", 1897, pages 42-43.

Though there was a slight dip in 1885, in general imports rose during the 1880's, ending rthe decade around double what they were at the beginning.

And this article directly contradicts the last one:

"MR. J. E. O'Conor's official review of the trade of India, just issued in the form of a Blue-book, comprises among its mass of facts and figures many details of special interest. Last year witnessed, we are told, the largest import into India of malt liquors ever known, the quantity being no less than 2,138,518 gallons, or more than twenty-five per cent. in excess of the imports of the previous year. Beer brewed in India amounts, it appears, to more than double that quantity, but it is nearly all bought by the Government for the British troops. Hence the competition of the home-brewed liquor has had no effect on the trade in beer imported for general consumption. At one time it appeared that imported beer was losing its hold on the Indian market, but the German and Austrian beers were opportunely introduced; light English ales were then specially brewed to compete with them, and the result is that the importation of beer is thus large and increasing."
London Daily News - Tuesday 04 December 1888, page 5.

That's an interesting point: as all the locally-brewed beer was sold directly to the government to supply British troops it didn't directly compete with imports. Locally-brewed beer did have one big advantage: it was untaxed, there being no excise duty on alcohol in India.

Reading the article, it sounds as if British brewers had successfully fought off competition from German and Austrian Lager by brewing Ales with similar qualities. I've seen adverts from the 1890's where brewers boast that their beers have all the good features of Lager. The ability of British brewers to mimic Lager to some extent with very light Ales has also been proposed as one reason why Lager brewing took so long to take off in Britian.

Once again, there's a false claim: that more beer was imported into India in 1888 than ever before. That's not true. The peak year in my figures was 1860 when 3,850,291 gallons (106,953 barrels) were imported*.

Next time we'll be looking at the 1890's.



* "Statistical abstract for the British Empire, Issue 9", 1873, pages 34-35.

World beer production 1912 - 1922

I've still not finished kicking the hop ball around. No sign of me getting bored just yet.

Once again, I've picked numbers from before and after WW I. In fact this is a perfect set of numbers for analysing the enormous impact of the war on the brewing industry.

I used to think that British beer took a hammering in WW I. Now I've looked into it more, I realise that Britain got off lightly compared to most of the rest of Europe. Even those countries which weren't directly involved, such as Switzerland and Denmark, saw beer production shrink. The only exception was the Southern European countries (Spain, Portugal and Italy).

It's a bit tricky making direct comparisons for the two major powers on the losing side, Germany and Austria-Hungary because of border changes. Especially in the case of Austria-Hungary, which was split among several new countries. Germany also lost a considerable amount of territory to Poland in the East and France in the West. But still nowhere like enough to account for a fall in production of 39 million hectolitres.

World hop consumption and beer production 1912 - 1922
	1912/13			1921/22
Counrtry	Probable beer production (hl)	hops (pfund) per hl beer	hop consumption (1,000 Zentner)	Probable beer production (hl)	hops (pfund) per hl beer	hop consumption (1,000 Zentner)
Germany	69,000,000	0.38	262	30,000,000	0.38	114
Austria	26,000,000	0.55	143
German Austria and Hungary				2,000,000	0.55	11
Czechoslovakia and eastern states				6,000,000	0.55	33
Yugoslavia and the Balkans				1,300,000	0.6	7.8
France	17,000,000	0.5	85	8,000,000	0.5	40
Belgium and the Netherlands	19,000,000	0.5	95	8,000,000	0.5	40
Russia	11,000,000	0.8	88
Scandinavia and Denmark	5,700,000	0.5	28	5,500,000	0.4	22
Switzerland	3,000,000	0.5	15	1,500,000	0.5	7.5
Spain, Portugal and Italy	800,000	0.5	4	1,600,000	0.5	8
Continental Europe	151,500,000	0.48	720	63,900,000	0.44	283.3
UK	58,000,000	1.0	580	42,000,000	1.2	504
Europe	209,500,000	0.62	1300	105,900,000	0.74	787.3
USA	74,000,000	0.5	370	Prohibition	-	110
Canada	1,900,000	0.6	11	1,200,000	0.6	7.2
Central America	600,000	0.6	3.5	600,000	0.6	3.6
South America	2,800,000	0.6	16	3,100,000	0.6	18.6
Americas	79,300,000	0.51	400.5	4,900,000	0.60	29.4
East Asia	400,000	0.6	2.5	1,400,000	0.6	8.4
Australia and New Zealand	2,800,000	0.75-1.0	23	3,200,000	0.9	28.8
Africa and India	300,000	0.6	2	800,000	0.7	5.6
Asia and Africa	3,500,000	0.79	27.5	5,400,000	0.79	42.8
World	293,200,000	0.59	1734	116,200,000	0.83	969.5
Source:
Barth Hop Report 1911-1912
Barth Hop Report 1914-1915 to 1920-1921

One other handy feature of this table is the quantity of hops used. In 1912/13 the UK used almost a third of total world consumption. By 1921/22 that was up to more than 50%. That can be partly accounted for by the much heavier hopping of British beer, around treble the rate in Germany. The British really did love their hops in the past.

Just to emphasise how big the drop in beer production was, here is the fall in percentage terms:

World beer production
Country	% change
Germany	-56.52%
France	-52.94%
Belgium and the Netherlands	-57.89%
Scandinavia and Denmark	-3.51%
Switzerland	-50.00%
Spain, Portugal and Italy	100.00%
Continental Europe	-57.82%
UK	-27.59%
Europe	-49.45%
Canada	-36.84%
Central America	0.00%
South America	10.71%
Americas	-93.82%
East Asia	250.00%
Australia and New Zealand	14.29%
Africa and India	166.67%
Asia and Africa	54.29%
World	-60.37%
Source (derived from):
Barth Hop Report 1911-1912
Barth Hop Report 1914-1915 to 1920-1921

The only region of the world to see an increase in beer production was Asia, which was mostly untouched by the war.

Note also that the fall in beer production was greater in victorious France than defeated Germany. The explanation is pretty simple: a high percentage of French breweries were in the area occupied by the Germans. All lost their copper, many had their buildings damaged or destroyed as well.

I'd argue that Prohibition, which was responsible for the massive decline in beer output in the Americas, was also a result of the war. It was pushed through during the war, partly based on fear of the Germans who dominated American brewing.

Put in a nutshell, WW I more than halved world beer production. An unprecedented disaster. 

The tax increase that changed British beer

The budget in 1931 had a huge impact on British beer. It was an attempt by the British government to raise more cash in response to the worldwide slump that follwed th stock market crash of 1929. It didn't work out anything like chancellor Snowden hoped.

The tax on a standard barrel of beer (36 gallons of beer with an OG of 1055º) had been 80 shillings since 1924. Quite a long period, by modern standards. In 1931 it was increased to 114 shillings, which raised the average price of a pint from 6d to 7d. At a time of high unemployment and stagnant or even falling wages, what happened is no surprise. Consumption fell.

"BIG DROP BRITISH BEER PRODUCTION
Decrease of Three-quarters of a Million Barrels in Six Months.
A decrease of over three-quarters a million standard barrels of beer produced in the first half of this year, compared with the first half 1930, is indicated in a written answer to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a written answer to a question put by E. Winterton (Lab., Loughborough).

Mr Snowden states : The number of standard and bulk barrels of beer produced in Great Britain and Northern Ireland during the half-years ended June 30, and 1931, respectively, and during the months of July and August, in the years 1930 and 1931, was as follows

	Standard Barrels.	Bulk Barrels.
Six months ended—
June 30, 1930	9,115,427	11,685,770
June 30, 1931	8,314,279	10,733,878
July, 1930	1,918,455	2,523,103
July, 1931	1,777,613	2,347,465
August, 1930	1,577,375	2,055,363
August, 1931	1,464,800*	1,921,700*

* Approximate."
Western Daily Press - Thursday 08 October 1931, page 9.

Two things buggered the amount of tax collected: a fall in consumption and a fall in gravity. Rather than increase the price of mass consumption beers such as Mild, brewers simply lowered the gravity so they sould sell it at the same price. The average gravity of Mild dropped from 1043º to 1037º.

After two years the government reversed the increase, but the damage had been done. Rather than raise the gravity of Mild back to the 1930 level, brewers merely reduced the price from 6d to 5d. Which meant that the tax generated fell even more in 1934.

By 1938 production levels had returned to a similar level to in 1930, but, because of the fall in average gravity, tax receipts were still lower. It was only when the tax was increased in 1940 to 104 shillings a standard barrel that the sum generatedexceeded that of 1930.

UK beer production and tax receipts 1930 - 1940
	Total Tax £	bulk barrels	standard barrels	average OG
1930	71,254,674	25,061,956	19,550,867	1042.9
1931	69,269,299	23,900,213		1042.54
1932	68,710,020	20,790,812	15,514,209	1041.04
1933	67,097,581	17,950,303	12,658,324	1039.52
1934	53,884,405	20,182,308	15,043,120	1040.99
1935	53,582,335	20,864,814	15,577,836	1041.06
1936	55,451,926	21,969,763	16,386,985	1041.02
1937	57,318,585	22,724,450	16,985,231	1041.1
1938	61,241,404	24,205,631	18,055,539	1041.02
1939	62,370,034	24,674,992	18,364,156	1040.93
1940	75,157,022	25,366,782	18,738,619	1040.62
Sources:
1955 Brewers' Almanack
Brewers' Society Statistical Handbook 1988, p.7
Brewers' Society Statistical Handbook 1973, p.11

Brewers had been perfectly aware of the likely impact of the tax increase and had warned the government. Here's one from a favourite character of mine, Calder, the canny Scot who rescued Allsopp:

"THE BEER TAX
BREWER DECLARES IT "GIGANTIC BLUNDER"
A striking speech on the injury to the revenue and to British trade by the additional beer duty imposed by the Supplementary Budget was made last night by Mr. J. J. Calder, managing director of Allsopps Brewery Company, at the annual dinner of the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Licensed Victuallers and Beer and Wine Trade Association Nottingham.

Mr. Calder declared that a gigantic mistake had been made, and that the tax, while it will fail to yield additional revenue, will seriously affect the employment brewery workers, ruin the market for barley and hops, and injure every industry which depends on the brewery trade.

The sale of beer had gone down by a percentage which was disastrous from the point of view of the revenue, of the brewer, and particularly of the licence-holder."
Western Morning News - Thursday 26 November 1931, page 8.

Slumping prioduction also had a knock-on effect on brewery profits and share prices:

"BREWERIES' SLUMP
MARKET DISAPPOINTED BY BUDGET
The outstanding feature of the Stock Exchange was the sharp set-back to Breweries, the market being very disappointed at the maintenance of the beer duty.

Courages and Guinness both lost over 5/-, while Watney deferreds and Meuxs both shed 4/9. Hoares slipped back to 40/-, while Benskins, Bass, Barclays, Allsops, Ind Coopes, and Taylor Walkers all showed appreciable losses."
Gloucester Citizen - Wednesday 20 April 1932, page 12.

How did the tax rise change British beer forever? It created modern Dark Mild. For the first time standard Mild fell below 4% ABV. A place it's been ever since.