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08-09-2014, 08:11
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Sorry about the title. I really couldn't think of anything better.

This comes from possibly the most frustrating digitised book ever, "Statistics relating to the Brewing Trade". Why frustrating? Because it contains really useful tables which you can't see. Most tables are too big for the pages and are on pullout sheets. WHoever scanned the book didn't bother pulling out these sheets and alll you can see are their blank banks. Fortunately a couple of the tables are readable.

In particular, there's a table of the number of brewing licences issued in 1864, grouped by size of output. Using it, you can get a good impression of the structure of the industry at the time. The first thing that strikes is the sheer number of brewers: 34,679. That's probably more than there are in the whole world today.

Obviously, most of those breweries were very small. The majority were pub breweries, which were still extremely common in many parts of England. In 1857, there were 25,026* "brewing victuallers", as they were quaintly known. Only 20 breweries were brewing more than 100,000 barrels a year. At least five, and probably more, of those were in London. Guinness, Bass and Allsopp are three others in this category. Maybe Beamish, too. Only 40 breweries were making more than 50,000 barrels and 316,000 more than 10,000 barrels. It's clear that there were few breweries operating on truly industrial scale, just a few hundred in the whole country.



London brewers in 1864 (barrels)


Barclay Perkins
415,721


Whitbread
204,154


Truman
520,945


Reid
273,069


Mann
187,587


Source:


The British Brewing Industry, 1830-1980 T. R. Gourvish & R.G. Wilson, pages 610-611



As late as 1857, publican brewers were producing almost a quarter of Britain's beer:



Malt usage in 1857



bushels malt
est. barrels
%


Brewers
25,965,217
12,982,609
77.74%


Publicans
7,434,561
3,717,281
22.26%


total
33,399,778
16,699,889



Source:


"Annals of British Legislation, vol. V" 1859, pages 333 and 334



Here's the table as presented by Amsinck:



Common Brewers in the United Kingdom Paying for Licenses in October 1864.



Exceeding
Not Exceeding
number
amount charged on each class
The supplementary charge on the Licenses expiring 10th October 1864
The supplementary diminution on the Licenses expiring 10th October 1864


No.
barrels
barrels

£ s. d.
£ s. d.
£ s. d.


1
0
1,000
31,017
91,848 15 0
17,503 12 0
7,125 0 6


2
1,000
10,000
1,647
78,449 18 0
12,630 4 0
2,502 5 8


3
10,000
20,000
178
34,368 18 0
3,496 12 0
1,024 16 0


4
20,000
30,000
64
22,125 0 0
3,045 3 0
287 13 0


5
30,000
50,000
34
17,525 15 0
2,142 18 6
411 2 6


6
50,000
100,000
20
18,428 2 6
2,573 15 6
241 17 6


7
100,000
150,000
7
10,907 7 6
1,020 0 0
0


8
150,000
200,000
1
2,172 15 0
108 15 0
0


9
200,000
450,000
4
11,543 10 0
274 7 6|
770 0 0


10
250,000
300,000
3
11,186 7 6
219 7 6
28 2 6


11
300,000
350,000
0
0
0



12
350,000
400,000
1
4,645 5 0
560 0 0



13
400,000
450,000
1
5,262 15 0
22 10 0



14
450,000
500,000
1
5,997 2 6
332 17 6



15
500,000

2
14,593 0 0
1,208 15 0



Beginners at 12s 6d
1,699
1,061 17 6







34,679
330,266 9 6
45,138 17 6
12,391 3 8







12,391 3 8



Net supplementary Charge

32,747 13 10
32,747 13 10



Total Amount paiti by all Classes

363,014 3 4




Source:


Statistics relating to the Brewing Trade, compiled by G. S. Amsinck, 1865, page 3.



To get a better idea of at what scale most beer was being produced, I decided to play with Amsinck's numbers a bit. By estimating how much each brewery in the different bands brewed, I'm able to calculate the total output from each band. For the higher bands it's pretty simple, I've just used the middle point. That doesn't work for the bottom two bands. I know that many pub breweries produced tiny amounts, fewer than 100 barrels a year. And in the second band, many brewers would have been at the bottom end of the range.

Here's the result:



Estimated output per size of brewer


from barrels
to barrels
no. brewers
average barrels per brewer
total barrels
% of total


0
1,000
31,017
200
6,203,400
27.44%


1,000
10,000
1,647
2,200
3,623,400
16.03%


10,000
20,000
178
15,000
2,670,000
11.81%


20,000
30,000
64
25,000
1,600,000
7.08%


30,000
50,000
34
40,000
1,360,000
6.02%


50,000
100,000
20
75,000
1,500,000
6.64%


100,000
150,000
7
125,000
875,000
3.87%


150,000
200,000
1
175,000
175,000
0.77%


200,000
450,000
4
325,000
1,300,000
5.75%


250,000
300,000
3
275,000
825,000
3.65%


300,000
350,000
0
325,000
0
0.00%


350,000
400,000
1
375,000
375,000
1.66%


400,000
450,000
1
425,000
425,000
1.88%


450,000
500,000
1
475,000
475,000
2.10%


500,000

2
600,000
1,200,000
5.31%


Total



22,606,800




My estimates are a bit out, because in 1865 20,276,623** were estimated to have been brewed in the UK (there is no exact figure), a bit less than the 22.6 million barrels from my guesstimates. But I'm not too far off. You can see that probably a quarter of all beer was brewed by those in the smalklest band. 43% was made by brewers with an output of fewer than 10,000 barrels. 68% came from breweries under 50,000 barrels.

What am I trying to say? That despite having been heavily industrialised and concentrated in some places - london, for example - for a century, most British beer was still being produced on a pretty small scale in the 1860's.

Of course the next 100 years would see the numbers of breweries in Britain forever shrinking and their scale forever growing. Until CAMRA came along.






* "Annals of British Legislation, vol. V" 1859, pages 333 and 334.
** Brewers' Almanack 1865.

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