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The way to get even more fun from numbers is to play with them to get new sets. Which is what I've done this time.

One of the wonderful features of the standard barrel, is that you know exactly how much tax was paid on it. In the 1880s and 1890s, that was 6s 3d. Making it a piece of piss to work out how many standard barrels were brewed in each constituent kingdom of the UK.

I have partil figures from other sources for the number of standard barrels brewed in the UK. It almost matches the ones I've calculated. There's a difference of few hundred thousand barrels. Nothing massive. Not sure why that would be.

One caveat: the figure for Ireland is very different to the amount of bulk barrels brewed. While in the rest of the UK the standard barrel gravity (initially 1057º, after 1889 1055º) was close to average gravity, in Ireland that wasn't the case. Because such a large percentage of the beer brewed was Stout, average OG was much higher. In the years just before WW I, it was around 1065º. It was probably higher than that in the period the table covers.

Beer Production 1882 - 1892 (standard barrels)
England. Scotland. Ireland. United Kingdom.
1882 24,355,850 963,894 1,978,877 27,298,621
1883 23,761,606 997,981 2,121,590 26,890,778
1884 24,035,405 1,063,715 2,063,021 27,162,141
1885 24,075,603 1,078,698 2,188,896 27,343,197
1886 23,647,338 1,089,955 2,154,166 26,891,459
1887 23,872,102 1,139,530 2,174,461 27,186,093
1888 24,406,083 1,206,822 2,264,000 27,876,906
1889 24,488,326 1,266,259 2,310,358 28,064,944
1890 26,262,947 1,412,934 2,437,482 30,113,363
1891 27,266,893 1,509,891 2,523,690 31,300,470
1892 27,472,669 1,484,413 2,568,749 31,525,830
Source:
"The Brewers' Guardian 1892", 1892, page 295.

Here's the same information in table in percentages:

Beer Production 1882 - 1892 (%)
England. Scotland. Ireland.
1882 89.22% 3.53% 7.25%
1883 88.36% 3.71% 7.89%
1884 88.49% 3.92% 7.60%
1885 88.05% 3.95% 8.01%
1886 87.94% 4.05% 8.01%
1887 87.81% 4.19% 8.00%
1888 87.55% 4.33% 8.12%
1889 87.26% 4.51% 8.23%
1890 87.21% 4.69% 8.09%
1891 87.11% 4.82% 8.06%
1892 87.14% 4.71% 8.15%
Source:
"The Brewers' Guardian 1892", 1892, page 295.

Remeber, in terms of bulk barrels, the share of Ireland would 10-12% lower.




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