Wednesday 11 February 2015

Materials used in brewing in the USA 1915 - 1920

We’re going to be having a tabletastic time again. You guessed it. I can’t be arsed to write many words.

My thanks to Jess Kidden (aka Steve) for sending me a ginormous table of this stuff. Just the sort of thing I can get my teeth into. I’ll be pestering with you these numbers for a while.

Right, let’s have the first table.

Materials used in brewing in the USA 1915 - 1920 (lbs)
YEAR PRODUCTION (BARRELS) MALT C0RN AND CORN PRODUCTS RICE OTHER GRAINS SUGAR AND SYRUPS OTHER MATERIALS
1915 59,808,210 2,141,723,104 604,890,901 167,750,177 145,697,970 109,630,425 68,880,530
1916 58,633,624 1,961,254,980 650,745,703 141,249,292 113,712,782 77,068,573 24,756,974
1917 60,817,379 2,770,964,606 666,401,619 125,632,269 204,089,800 115,838,410 17,573,893
1918 50,266,216 1,227,301,254 459,842,338 78,942,550 68,693,042 64,930,019 5,491,879
1919 27,712,648 854,329,231 112,969,071 17,356,242 25,780,394 54,502,845 4,803,123
1920 9,231,280 292,423,712 48,551,910 9,357,668 483,477 23,354,072 4,822,391
Source:
Various editions of the "The Brewers Almanac"


Nice numbers, but they make more sense converted to percentages:

Materials used in brewing in the USA 1915 - 1920 (%)
YEAR MALT C0RN AND CORN PRODUCTS RICE OTHER GRAINS SUGAR AND SYRUPS OTHER MATERIALS
1915 66.13% 18.68% 5.18% 4.50% 3.39% 2.13%
1916 66.06% 21.92% 4.76% 3.83% 2.60% 0.83%
1917 71.04% 17.09% 3.22% 5.23% 2.97% 0.45%
1918 64.42% 24.14% 4.14% 3.61% 3.41% 0.29%
1919 79.86% 10.56% 1.62% 2.41% 5.09% 0.45%
1920 77.16% 12.81% 2.47% 0.13% 6.16% 1.27%
Source:
Various editions of the "The Brewers Almanac"

As you can see, malt made up on average about two-thirds of the grist. Which is similar to what we saw after the repeal of Prohibition. I wonder if the fall in percentage of maize and rice and increase in sugar was connected with the war.

I know what you young’uns like: hops. So here’s US hop usage in the same period:

Hop usage in the USA 1915 - 1920
YEAR HOPS HOPS LBS./ BBL.
1915 38,839,294 0.65
1916 37,451,610 0.64
1917 41,958,753 0.69
1918 33,481,415 0.67
1919 13,924,650 0.41
1920 6,440,894 0.7
Source:
Various editions of the "The Brewers Almanac"


Not sure if that tells us very much. So let’s compare it to the UK:

Hop usage in the UK 1914 - 1920
year bulk barrels hops( lbs) hops lbs/  Imperial barrel hops lbs/  US barrel
1914 36,162,273 62,655,438 1.73 1.24
1915 34,765,780 52,323,711 1.51 1.08
1918 19,085,043 29,499,261 1.55 1.11
1919 23,264,533 41,183,160 1.77 1.27
1920 34,776,258 56,351,680 1.62 1.16
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1928, page 110
Brewers' Almanack 1928, page 111
Brewers' Almanack 1955, page 62

What surprised me there is how little hop usage went down, despite gravities plummeting in this period. But one point is clear: American beers were much more lightly hopped that British ones. Oh, and notice how more hops in absolute terms were used in the UK.

And that’s it. Loads more to come, though.

1 comment:

JessKidden said...

Besides a number of states having or enacting state prohibition measures during the period 1915-1920, there were also a few Federal laws (the Lever Acts - which permitted WWI-era grain rationing measures by Presidential proclamation) that affected US beer production before National Prohibition in Jan. 1920.

Basically -

After Jan. 1, 1918 - malt beverages limited to under 2.75% abw

Dec. 1, 1918 - All malt beverage production ceased

Jan. 1, 1919 - Permits brewing of "non-intoxicating" malt beverages (under 0.5% abv).