Sunday 29 January 2017

The economy through the eyes of beer

I'm still hard at work on my Macbeth book. hence the low quality of recent posts.

I'm pulling together all sorts of tables for the book. Way to many, I'm sure many won't make the final cut. I just love numbers. I can't help clumping them together in tables. Like the one below.

It's a table - rather incomplete at the moment - that will feature in the introduction to chapter two. Just general info leading up to the real meat of the chapter, all the details about beer styles. Who knows how much of this stuff I'll include, Probably time will decide. When it's time to finish off the book, I'll stop adding material.

The first two chapters of the book are somewhere near completion. Chapter three is about half done and chapter four needs a lot of work. While I was checking just now I got distracted and started adding more material. It's like an addiction, really. Except one that's fun. There's an immense satisfaction in seeing a book start to take shape. Even it is a pretty ugly shape. A lot of tidying needs to be done.

Let's get back to the table. What does it tell us, other than how much beer was being brewed in any particular year? We can see the state of the British economy. The numbers begin low because the 1870's were one long economic depression in the UK. The 1890's were boom years for British brewing and you can see that in the numbers.

It's also clear that the econmic downturn hit Scotland harder than England. Because Scottish beer output increased more. After 1904, extra taxes imposed on the brewing industry affected the trade and caused output to fall.


Beer production (standard barrels) 1882 - 1914
Year UK Scotland % Scotland
1882 27,870,526 1,088,000 3.90%
1883 27,140,891 1,122,360 4.14%
1884 27,750,091 1,216,319 4.38%
1885 27,986,493 1,237,323 4.42%
1886 1,236,000
1887 1,322,000
1888 1,392,000
1889 1,485,000
1890 30,808,315 1,666,897 5.41%
1891 30,868,315 1,767,000 5.72%
1892 1,736,000
1893 1,700,000
1894 1,744,000
1895 31,678,486 1,758,879 5.55%
1896 33,826,354 1,970,000 5.82%
1897 34,203,049 2,000,000 5.85%
1898 35,632,629 2,055,000 5.77%
1899 36,498,390 2,179,000 5.97%
1900 37,091,123 2,136,992 5.76%
1901 36,394,827 2,137,000 5.87%
1902 2,075,000
1903 1,939,000
1904 1,877,000
1905 34,404,287 2,021,374 5.88%
1906 1,825,000
1907 1,811,000
1908 1,811,000
1909 1,720,000
1910 32,947,252 1,758,879 5.34%
1911 1,769,000
1912 1,886,000
1913 34,805,291 1,837,000 5.28%
1914 36,057,913 1,977,000 5.48%
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1928, page 109.
“A History of the Brewing Industry in Scotland” by Ian Donnachie, 1998, pages 147-148.

No comments: