The Baltic Trade 217
Dutch beer-market. But as new research has shown, this idea has not always
been the reality.82
Beer was usually brown in Europe, but hopped beer in good quality was
exclusively brown in the northern German towns.83 The deciding factors of this
success were the availability of good fresh water and especially the constant
supply of barley, malt and hop. The only places that possessed these require-
ments were the north German harbor towns: here there was a wide grain-
producing hinterland which was close to the big hop-areas of Mecklenburg
and Brandenburg.84 Normally Eimbeck in Lower Saxony is recognized as one
of the most important brewhouses, but the annually export of Eimbeck was
minimal compared to that of Lübeck, Wismar, or Rostock.85
In German towns brewery was a privileged craft, but the number of brew-
ers in a town is not necessarily correlated with the amount of beer exported
from a town. In the fifteenth century, the 270 Hamburgian brewers exported
more beer in one year than the 700 brewers in Eimbeck in ten years.86 During
the fourteenth and fifteenth century, Hamburg exported 90,000 tons of beer
annually, Lübeck 80,000 tons (120,000 hl), followed by Rostock and Wismar. In
contrast, Eimbeck exported about 5,000 tons per annum, which was half of the
annual production of one Lubeckian brewer.87
The export of western Baltic beer is a phenomenon from the beginning of
the fourteenth century onwards.88 Its importance increased in the course of
the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth century and declined again in the six-
teenth and seventeenth century.89 The increasing export of beer can be logi-
cally associated with the decline of grain exports from the western Baltic during
82 W. Frontzek, Braugewerbe.
83 Christine von Blanckenburg, Die Hanse und ihr Bier. Brauwesen und Bierhandel im
hansischen Verkehrsgebiet Quellen und Darstellungen zur Hansischen Geschichte, 51
(Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2001), 255.
84 C. Jahnke, “Der Ostseeraum,” chapter β, forthcoming; Blanckenburg, Die Hanse, 196–204;
Friedrich Techen, “Das Brauwerk in Wismar.” Hansische Geschichsblätter 41 (1915), 263–
352; Wilhelm Stieda, “Studien zur Gewerbegeschichte Lübecks, Teil 3, Hopfenanbau.”
Mitteilungen des Vereins für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde 3. Heft (1887),
Nr. 1–2, 1–16.
85 W. Frontzek, Braugewerbe, 16f.
86 W. Frontzek, Braugewerbe, 26.
87 W. Frontzek, Braugewerbe, 16f. and 64.
88 See in general Richard W. Unger, “Beer: A new bulk good of international trade.” In
Cogs, cargoes and Commerce. Maritime bulk trade in Northern Europe, 1150–1400, ed. Lars
Berggren, Nils Hybel and Annette Landen (Toronto: Pontifical Institute, 2002), 113–127.
89 W. Frontzek, Braugewerbe, 64–73.