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Brewing records often contain more than just the details of individual brews. Sometimes there are totals of various kinds. I stumbled on one of these yesterday.

A dead handy set of total it is, giving the malt and hop usage of William Younger for the year ending September 30th 1858. Here it is, just scribbled into one page of the brewing book:



One of the reasons I love Whitbread's records is for the tables at the back of each brewing book. There's one that lists every brew of each beer with monthly and annual totals. Dead useful for observing the waxing and waning popularity of different beers.

There's another table I've not used until now. One listing the use of malt and hops over the year, again with annual totals. This is it:



Can you see where this is going? Towards a table, that's where it's going. This table:


Hop usage at William Younger and Whitbread
Younger - year ending 30 September 1858 Whitbread year ending July 1865
qtrs malt 17,598 20,906
lbs hops 166,498 181,839
lbs hops/qtr 9.46 8.70
Sources:
Document LMA/4453/D/01/029 held at the London Metropolitan Archives
Document WY/6/1/2/14 held at the Scottish Brewing Archive


This isn't total Whitbread usage, by the way. Just for their Ales. (Ale and Porter are in different brewing books.)

As you can see, the overall quantities are relatively similar. With one slight difference: William Younger was using proportionally more hops than Whitbread.

Anyone still believe Scottish brewers barely used any hops?


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