Dutch hop imports 1937 - 1954

Even more boring old numbers. Don't worry. I've still plenty more to annoy you with.

Fascinating to see the source of Dutch hops. I had the impression that far more hops were imported from Germany in the 1930s. But that's based on what I've seen in Heineken brewing records, where the hops seem to be about 50-50 split between Germany and Czechoslovakia. Clearly, they weren't typical. As the the majority of hops were imported from Czechoslovakia.

While after the war it really was Germany which dominated imports. I can understand why Czech imports might have been interrupted in 1949 when the communists took over. But it's less easy to understand why that should have hung over into the 1950s.

As a neighbouring country and one of the biggest hop producers in the world, it's no real shock that Germany should have been Holland's main hop supplier. Interesting that the UK supplied so many hops in 1951. Then very few from 1953 onwards.

Dutch hop imports 1937 - 1954 (tonnes)
Country	1937	1938	1949	1950	1951	1952	1953	1954
Germany	28	62	216
West Germany				208	206	98	173	231
Czechoslovakia	289	165	4	17	71	71	26	107
Poland	17	72
Yugoslavia	37	30		7	22	67	69	63
UK			2	65	134	49	10	4
Belgium/Lux.				18	9	8	13	5
France					2	11	19
USA					3	30	5	11
Total	389	345	223	315	447	334	314	424
Source:
De Nederlandse Brouwindustrie in Cijfers, by Dr. H. Hoelen, Centraal Brouwerij Kantoor, 1955, held at the Amsterdam City Archives, page 14.

 

 

Barclay Perkins and Co.'s Imperial Brown Stout

Intrigued as to the age of the term "Imperial Stout", I decided to give the newspaper archives a quick twirl. Not sure it threw up any real answers. I did find a nice Barclay Perkins reference, though.

I've searched in the past for Barclay Perkins price lists without success. Which is why I was so surprised to find this. Though, sadly, it doesn't include actual prices.

"BARCLAY, PERKINS, AND CO.’S IMPERIAL BROWN STOUT
THE Subscribers, with reference to their Advertisement of November last, now beg to intimate, that they have received a few Hhds for sample of the above PORTER, which, has been brewed expressly for the Scotch Trade, and is rich and mild, and of very fine flavour. They will feel happy to show it to any of their friends who may find it convenient to call at the Store. In two or three weeks they will have a plentiful supply.

Messrs B. P. & Co.’s Porter of all strengths, possesses the double advantage of coming ripe in bottle in a short period, and of keeping in a perfect sound state for any reasonable length of time.

The Subscribers have it fifteen years in bottle in a perfectly sound state, retaining its full quality, and flavour much Improved.

The kinds of Porter, which the Subscribers have now on sale, brewed by Messrs B. P. & Co. are as under, viz:—

Common Porter,	marked P.
Brown Stout,	do. B.S.
Double Brown Stout	do. B.B.S.
Imperial Brown Stout,	do. XX.

And they request of their numerous Friends in Town and Country, that in giving orders for either of the above qualities, they would have the goodness to specify particularly the marks, to prevent mistakes, as the different kinds of Porter are called by various names by other Houses in the Trade.

No. 28, St Andrew Street, Leith, 18th Jan. 1833.
J. G. THOMSON & CO."
The Scotsman - Saturday 19 January 1833, page 1.

It is just about a full list of their products at the time. Only FSt, a weak Stout that was almost identical to their Porter, except that in contained a higher proportion of brown malt, and Table Beer. At the time, Barclay Perkins were yet to dip their toes into the Ale market.

The bottled beers sound like magic - coming into condition quickly and staying good for years. Though, if you think about it carefully, it does seem possible. If they had already been vat aged for a long period, they would have carbonate in the bottle. And the Brettanomyces which was present would keep them sound for years. That was certainly true of  the later Russian Stout.

Even at the time of WW II, Barclay's had a considerable trade in Scotland, which might seem a bit of a surprise. So much so, that they brewed a special version of Russian Stout just for Scotland. I'm not so sure that they had special versions for north of the border back in the 1830s. There's no indication that I've seen in the brewing records. 

What is said to have been chalked on the barrels to indicate the beer contained inside did surprise me a bit. Because they don't all match the brew house names. BS and BBS (or BSt and BBSt) do tally with the brewing records. 

 Porter, however, was called TT. And as for Imperial Stout, that was IBS (or IBSt). XX is not just a weird designation for such a strong Stout, it's also dead confusing. Especially as they had no X. A few years later, when they started brewing a set of X Ales, there's no way they could have continued to use XX for Imperial Stout.

 

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1881 Whitbread SSS

Fluttering proudly at the top of the Whitbread Black Beer flagpole was SSS. Probably known as Treble Stout. That’s the way it usually goes: Single, Double, Treble and, at the very top, Imperial Stout.

Not much to say, recipe-wise, this being parti-gyled with SS. Hence an identical recipe, just more of everything. Instead, I’ll give you the gyling details. Three worts of different gravities, blended to hit the required gravities for SS and SSS:

SS
barrels	gravity	gravity
63	41.4	1114.7
87	25.5	1070.6
67	23	1063.7
217	29.4	1081.4

SSS
barrels	gravity	gravity
148	41.4	1114.7
99	25.5	1070.6
26	23	1063.7
273	33.9	1093.9

As you would expect, SSS received a greater proportion of the strongest wort – more than half of its total volume. While in SS it’s less than a third.

Surprisingly, Whitbread brewed more SSS than SS: 14,366 barrels in 1881. Only 9,143 barrels of SS were made during the same year.

SSS was discontinued in 1917, along with SS. I would have expected that to be the end of it. Except, with wonderfully poor timing, it was revived in 1939. And, inevitably, disappeared forever early in 1940.
 

1881 Whitbread SSS
pale malt	14.50 lb	69.05%
brown malt	3.50 lb	16.67%
black malt	1.00 lb	4.76%
No. 3 invert sugar	2.00 lb	9.52%
Goldings 90 mins	2.50 oz
Hallertau 90 mins	1.50 oz
Goldings 60 mins	4.00 oz
Goldings 30 mins	4.00 oz
Goldings dry hops	1.00 oz
OG	1094
FG	1024
ABV	9.26
Apparent attenuation	74.47%
IBU	102
SRM	42
Mash at	149º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	57º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

 

Dutch beer consuption per head by province

Yes. More numbers. More incredibly detailed numbers of very little interest to anyone but me. The best type of numbers. 

This set is consumption broken down by Dutch province. All seven of them. And there's a clear pattern. The further south you go, the more beer is being drunk. Not just a small difference but a massive one. The difference was almost nine fold between the driest province (Drenthe) and wettest (Limburg) in 1938.

That's a lot. It now makes me wish that I had comparable figures for the UK. I'm sure that there were variations there, too. But I doubt that they were anything like as large.

I'm surprised that the provinces of the Randstad - Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland and Utrecht - had such modest beer consumption. Those three provinces contain all of Holland's largest cities: Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. Which is where you would expect inhabitants to be the thirstiest. In reality, the areas closest to Belgium - Zeeland, Noord-Brabant and Limburg - liked their beer the most.

Consumption increased everywhere during the war. Presumably, at least in part due to the presence of German troops. In the case of some provinces doubling. Though these were those with the least consumption before the war.

Post-war, regional difference were still stark, but not quite as extreme as before the war. The ratio of beeriest to least beery had been reduced to merely five to one. With consumption up in the northern provinces and down in all the others, with the exception of Zeeland.

Did they really drink less in the North, or did they just prefer jenever? Sadly, I don't have comparable figures for consumption of spirits.

Dutch beer consumption per head by province (litres)
Year	Groningen	Friesland	Drenthe	Overijssel	Gelderland	Noord-Holland	Zuid-Holland	Utrecht	Zeeland	Noord-Brabant	Limburg
1938	6.9	5.0	4.3	10	10.2	12.7	14.2	10.5	16.7	23.6	37.0
1939	7.2	5.0	4.7	10.4	11.4	15.5	15.4	12.8	15.5	26.0	40.2
1940	8.8	6.9	5.5	12.1	15.6	16.3	19.7	17.7	21.3	54.4	41.8
1941	12.3	10.4	6.8	16.5	18.2	21.3	24.4	22.3	27.8	42.9	53.1
1942	12.1	9.9	6.8	15.8	16.8	20.2	22.6	20.3	25.3	37.3	46.8
1943	13.6	10.7	8.5	18.5	18.9	21.6	25.3	22.1	28.9	40.0	49.1
1946	11.1	7.4	7.9	14.2	15.7	15.8	18.5	15.6	17.5	27.7	43.3
1947	8.8	5.6	7.0	14.2	15.1	12.1	14.7	11.4	17.1	24.7	45.5
1948	6.9	4.0	5.2	11.2	11.6	9.3	11.5	8.2	17.0	19.9	39.7
1949	5.0	3.2	5.7	7.8	8.5	6.8	8.6	6.0	15.0	15.5	30.9
1950	5.5	3.7	4.1	8.9	8.7	6.7	9.1	6.1	16.0	16.3	31.2
1951	5.8	3.8	4.4	9.5	9.0	6.5	9.1	6.2	15.4	16.5	29.8
1952	6.1	4.0	4.8	9.9	9.2	7.0	9.6	6.6	19.0	15.5	29.4
1953	7.5	4.8	5.9	11.5	10.5	8.1	10.9	7.9	21.7	18.0	29.9
1954	8.0	5.2	6.3	12.5	11.6	8.8	12.1	8.9	21.3	19.7	31.8
Source:
De Nederlandse Brouwindustrie in Cijfers, by Dr. H. Hoelen, Centraal Brouwerij Kantoor, 1955, held at the Amsterdam City Archives, page 58 and 59.

Dutch expenditure on alcohol

Look, it's a holiday weekend. I've just stuck my hand into my bag of Dutch beer statistics and plucked out this one. 

I still need to take a post Sunday dinner walk while the sun is shining. Which it's only done for 5 minutes in the past fortnight. The cloud has been so low, I couldn't even see the planes coming in to land at Schiphol. Usually you can wave to the pilot, they're that close to the ground.

On with today's dull set of numbers. Starting with a caveat. These raw numbers don't take into account inflation. They don't tell us anything about the volume of beer being consumed. Hang on. I have the consumption numbers for some of the period. I can work out the average price per litre.

I don't have the consumption figures to hand for much of the pre-war period. But I'd guess the price was pretty constant in the 1930s. Unsurprisingly, it shoots up after the war. Though some of it is explained by a switch from Lagerbier to the more expensive Pils.

I'm fascinated by the balance between beer and spirits, as it swings from the latter to the former between the wars. Then back again ending up in just about equilibrium.

Dutch expenditure on alcohol (millions of guilders)
	all alcoholic drinks	beer	spirits	wine	consumption (hl)	price per litre (guilders)
1923	167	47	59	36
1924	170	50	55	40
1925	173	51	53	44
1926	175	53	53	44
1927	178	53	53	47
1928	186	59	55	47
1929	173	60	44	44
1930	170	60	39	46
1931	170	56	47	42
1932	149	48	44	32
1933	137	43	39	30
1934	127	40	35	27
1935	121	36	33	27
1936	117	33	33	26
1937	120	33	33	29	1,295,116	0.25
1938	124	35	35	29	1,422,923	0.25
1939	150	38	35	32	1,602,662	0.24
1947	247	80	-	-	1,310,470	0.61
1948	300	73	-	-	1,008,805	0.72
1949	291	67	-	-	1,069,431	0.63
1950	290	71	-	-	1,087,868	0.65
1952	-	148	-	-	1,155,647	1.28
1953	-	168	-	-	1,295,376	1.30
1954	-	184	-	-	1,433,577	1.28
Source:
De Nederlandse Brouwindustrie in Cijfers, by Dr. H. Hoelen, Centraal Brouwerij Kantoor, 1955, held at the Amsterdam City Archives, pages 31 and 46.

Dutch Münchener 1945 - 1950

A similar story is repeated across all Dutch beer styles. Though there were some differences. Take Münchener, for example. Before the war, it was generally higher in terms of both gravity and ABV than Pils. Not so after the war. The average gravities of Pils and Münchener were identical and, due to the lower degree of attenuation of the latter, the ABV is 0.6% ABV less.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a set of pre-war analyses for the style. I’m basing this mostly on Heineken brewing records. In 1939, their Münchener was 12.59º Plato and 5% ABV, None of the post-war versions can match either figure and most are considerably lower. Only Bavaria’s managed to hit the 5% ABV mark

There’s one real outlier in terms of colour: the beer from Cevelum. It’s just about the colour of a Stout, which seems rather dark for the style. 

Dutch Münchener 1945 - 1950
Year	Brewer	Beer	OG Plato	FG Plato	ABV	App. Atten-uation	Colour
1945	Heineken (Ams.)	Münchener	7.55	2.52	2.58	67.29%	12.5
1945	Heineken (Rtm.)	Münchener	7.88	2.26	2.89	71.96%	11.5
1946	Oranjeboom	Münchener	7.90	2.41	2.80	70.16%	19
1947	Grolsch	Münchener	7.99	1.51	3.33	81.59%	25
	Average		7.83	2.18	2.90	72.75%	17.00
1947	Amstel	Münchener	10.67	4.45	3.26	59.31%	15.2
1947	Heineken (Ams.)	Münchener	10.96	3.67	3.78	67.47%	13.8
1947	Oranjeboom	Münchener	11.83	4.64	3.79	61.88%	22
1947	Van Vollenhoven	Münchener	11.54	3.77	4.09	68.33%	19
1947	ZHB	Münchener	11.31	3.12	4.31	73.30%	29
1949	Amstel	Münchener	10.99	4.59	3.28	59.28%	14.2
1949	Bavaria	Münchener	11.66	1.96	5.11	83.83%	25
1949	Brand	Münchener	10.17	2.69	4.13	74.33%	19
1949	Cevelum	Münchener	11.48	2.95	4.46	75.16%	2 * 110
1949	Drie Hoefijzers	Münchener	12.40	4.28	4.25	66.58%	14.5
1949	Oranjeboom	Münchener	11.23	3.21	4.09	72.32%	19.5
1949	Phoenix	Münchener	10.93	2.41	4.44	78.69%	14
1950	Amstel	Münchener	11.12	4.28	3.50	62.54%	22
1950	Grolsch	Münchener	12.17	2.85	4.81	77.44%	24
1950	Oranjeboom	Münchener	12.14	4.34	4.07	65.34%	23
1950	ZHB	Münchener	11.11	3.76	3.79	67.13%	22
	Average		11.36	3.56	4.07	69.56%	19.75
Source:
Rapporten van laboratoriumonderzoeken naar producten van Heineken brouwerijen in binnen- en buitenland en naar producten van andere brouwerijen held at the Amsterdamse Stadsarchief, document number 834 - 1794.

Let's Brew - 1881 Whitbread SS

What better way to kick off the new year than a strong Stout recipe? Yum.

Next branch up the Whitbread Stout tree is SS. What I suppose you would have been called Double Stout. And quite a hefty beer.

It wasn’t one of Whitbread’s most popular beers. Just 9,143 barrels were brewed in 1881, out of a total of 284,391 barrels.  Given its gravity and the extended ageing it received, it must have been an expensive beer.

As you’d expect, the grist is quite similar to XPS. As it is, with just a bit more brown malt and a little less pale. They certainly liked their brown malt in London, especially in stronger Stouts.  As in all Whitbread’s beers, the type of sugar is merely my guess.

I’ve also lowered the FG to reflect the secondary fermentation. About a year in vats with Brettanomyces would see to that. Probably more, really.

Quite a lot of different types of hops: English from 1880, 1881 and 1881; Bavarian from 1881 and something merely described as “samples”.

1881 Whitbread SS
pale malt	12.25 lb	68.06%
brown malt	3.25 lb	18.06%
black malt	0.75 lb	4.17%
No. 3 invert sugar	1.75 lb	9.72%
Goldings 90 mins	2.25 oz
Hallertau 90 mins	1.25 oz
Goldings 60 mins	3.50 oz
Goldings 30 mins	3.50 oz
Goldings dry hops	1.00 oz
OG	1081.5
FG	1020
ABV	8.14
Apparent attenuation	75.46%
IBU	98
SRM	37
Mash at	149º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	57º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale