Friday 27 November 2009

Peace at last

Here's a excerpt from my latest Mini Book, "Peace!". Not a particularly long or exciting excerpt, but you can't have everything. If you want to see the bulk of it you'll need to be either lucky (get one of the free copies) or lay down some dosh.



Once the dust had settled after WW I, average gravity had dropped by about 10º from its pre-war level. It remained at around 1043º until 1931, when a big rise in beer duty (from 80s to 114s per standard barrel) prompted brewers to cut gravities to avoid increasing the price of a pint. The tax increase was reversed in 1933, but gravities never got back to their old levels, remaining around 1041º.

The uneven approach of brewers to the tax increase - dropping the gravity of some styles, such as Mild and Porter, increasing the price of others like Bitter - widened the gap in strength between the cheap and expensive beers. In 1923, Whitbread's X Ale had an OG of 1042.1º and its PA 1046.4º. In 1933, X was 1036.1º and PA 1048.8º.

Aside from that one little blip in the early 1930's, beer tax was remarkably stable in the interwar period, remaining at 80s per standard barrel from 1924 onwards.

This table gives an overview of beer output and taxation between the wars:

British brewing overview 1920 – 1939


Production (barrels)

Production (hl)

Average OG

tax per standard barrel

Net excise receipts (pounds)

1920

35,047,947

57,358,068

1039.41

70s

71,276,230

1921

34,504,570

56,468,799

1042.61

100s

123,406,257

1922

30,178,731

49,389,304

1042.88

100s

121,844,583

1923

23,948,651

39,193,404

1042.72

100s

92,262,893

1924

25,425,017

41,609,566

1043.04

80s

76,110,638

1925

26,734,825

43,753,145

1043.12

80s

75,825,827

1926

26,765,610

43,803,527

1043.23

80s

76,320,021

1927

25,100,461

41,078,410

1043.28

80s

78,763,480

1928

25,435,145

41,626,141

1043.17

80s

77,800,471

1929

24,608,000

40,272,468

1043.10

80s


1930

25,061,956

41,015,395

1042.90

80s

71,254,674

1931

23,900,000

39,113,784

1042.50

114s


1932

20,790,812

34,025,411

1041.04

114s

68,710,020

1933

17,950,303

29,376,748

1039.52

80s

67,097,581

1934

20,182,308

33,029,558

1040.99

80s

53,884,405

1935

20,864,814

34,146,520

1041.06

80s

53,582,335

1936

21,969,763

35,954,835

1041.02

80s

55,451,926

1937

22,724,450

37,189,926

1041.10

80s

57,318,585

1938

24,205,631

39,613,967

1041.02

80s

61,241,404

1939

24,674,992

40,382,105

1040.93

80s

62,370,034

Sources:

Brewers' Almanack 1928, p. 110

Brewers' Almanack 1955, p. 50

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