Tuesday 4 June 2013

UK hop usage 1934 - 1953

Except the war years are missed out. For a good reason. They didn't appear in one of the tables I'm basing this on.

I spend a lot of my day looking at numbers. Sometimes they provoke me to write a few words. As in this case. I'd been harvesting various statistics about barley and hops from the Brewers' Almanack, one of my all-time favourite books. When I was busy with those for world hop production something struck me. A fact I thought was worth passing on.

I noticed it because recently I'd been messing with the figures for UK hop imports nad hop usage. The quantity of hops used in the UK was still fresh in my mind. And easy to recall because it hovered around a quarter of a million cwt. for a long tiime in the middle of the 20th century.

To be honest, I was quite surprised how high up the league table of hop producers Britain came: number 2 pre-WW II, after the USA. Down to number 3 after WW II, but pretty much neck and neck with Germany.

Combining the world production with UK usage highlighted a fascinating fact: the UK used a considerable percentage of the world's hops.


UK hop usage 1934 - 1953
year cwt hops world production % used in UK
1934 248,744
1935 258,300
1937 270,692
1937 277,846
1938 286,716
average 1934-38 268,460 1,173,302 22.88%
1951 228,512 1,379,251 16.57%
1952 225,569 1,272,678 17.72%
1953 216,841 1,182,653 18.34%
Sources:
1955 Brewers'Almanack, page 63
1955 Brewers' Almanack, page 65.

As you can see, immediately before WW II, the UK used almost 23% of the world production of hops. I was surprised that it was so high.  Even after WW II it was around 18%.

Knowing how much British hop usage fell after WW I - 1905 to 1914 an average of 560,549 cwts were used each year in the UK* - I can only assume that the percentage of the world crop consumed in Britain was much higher. Possibly as much as 50%. I need to find the figures for world hop production for the early years of the 20th century.

Here's the table of world hop production. The vast majority came from the four largest producers: USA, UK, Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Hops: World Production
Country Annual Averages
1934-38 1945-1949 1951 1952 1953
cwts. cwts. cwts. cwts. cwts.
Northern Hemisphere
USA 348,009 465,455 564,634 546,991 372,786
Canada 14,393 19,170 17,339 17,920 15,179§
United Kingdom 250,205 275,768 321,821 282,348 266,000
Czechoslovakia 191,625§ 90,393 98,420§ 80,705§ 98,420§
Germany 178,866 76,143 252,795 206,187 280,500
France 44,071 24,161 41,330 34,446 48,223
Belgium 23,741 13,527 19,366 17,062 19,179
Spain t t 2,607 3,661
Poland 34,884 t t t t
Yugoslavia 35,509 25,179 24,652 23,652 25,589
Other European 2,643 t t t t
USSR 19,687 t t t t
Japan 1,286 2,196 9,054 16,241 13,286
Total 1,144,919 991,992 1,349,411 1,228,159 1,142,823
Southern Hemisphere*
Australia 20,571 21,348 18,384 31,920 28,000§
New Zealand 7,812 7,107 7,795 8,036 7,589§
Union of South Africa t 2,018 2,482 3,384 3,125§
Argentina t 768 1,179 1,179 1,116§
Total 28,383 31,241 29,840 44,519 39,830§
World Total 1,173,302 1,023,233 1,379,251 1,272,678 1,182,653§
* crops harvested early in the following year
t not available
§ estimate
Source:
1955 Brewers' Almanack, page 65.



* 1928 Brewers' Almanack, page 120.

2 comments:

Rob said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hops#World_production

Germany is now #1 and UK #8.

Of course its wikipedia, so I would trust numbers from you more.

Ron Pattinson said...

Rob,

I should be able to find reliable statistics in the BBPA Statistical Handbook. I must remember to look them up.