English IPA

Historical Development

The history of India Pale Ale is easily the most misunderstood and mischaracterized story in beer. The pop culture tale we're often sold is that when brewers in England needed a way to get their beer to India without losing it to spoilage, they tossed in all the hops they could find so that it would survive the long journey. Yes, the acids from hops do act as a preservative against bacterial contamination, but that story is just lies. Let's explore what really happened, or at least what we can piece together of it (which isn't all that much).

The real story starts with the English defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588, after which British merchants asked the Queen for permission to sail to the Indian Ocean with the goal of taking a market from the destabilized Spanish traders. When the British arrived, they promptly started dying from tainted liquor in the region, which prompted brewers to send their beer to India on the merchant ships for Englishmen working in India. Contrary to that story we're all told, newspaper ads from Calcutta clearly show that even in the earlier years, ships were bringing everything from porter to pale ale to cider with them on their trips.

Just like the origins of American Lager, it's not always the first person to do something that gets credit for its invention. In this case, it was just the person who gamed the system a little bit better. George Hodgson's brewery, who are often wrongly credited with "inventing" this style, happened to sit near the East India Company's docks on the River Thames in London. When his son Mark took over the family business, he recognized an opportunity in the Indian market, and cut deals with the trading vessels to bring beer that was popular in India, and do it a bit cheaper than others would. Hodgson was hardly the first person to brew a pale ale in England, and highly hopped beer had existed for centuries on country estates. In addition to the "small beer" they made for everyday drinking, estate brewers made beer with the finest of harvested ingredients every October that was meant to be set until the following October. They used higher-than-average malt bills, partially to boost the alcohol for aging but also because they were making two or three beers from one mash. On the low end, these so-called "October" beers were around 8% ABV, and they only went up from there. They also used higher-than-average hop bills, with one recipe from the 1700s having nearly two pounds per barrel. As a final piece to this tasty, boozy puzzle, the invention of coke-fired malt kilns would have made it possible to create pale versions of these October beers.

So early versions of the IPA were around for at least a century, likely more, before they're supposedly "invented" by Hodgson. What Hodgson's company did do is intelligently take advantage of a new market, and make a product that was wildly popular there. This might have made them a bit overconfident, however. When Hodgson's son Mark began demanding more difficult trading terms with the East India Company, and at about the same time as a new channel opened to Burton on Trent making trade easier, the Allsopp brewery began brewing a similar beer. With the Burton water chemistry, those ingredients yielded a drier, more hop-focused beer that became the benchmark of the style.

So unfortunately IPAs, like American Lager, were born out of intelligent business practice rather than passionate brewing practice. Honestly, though, that doesn't really matter…the beer caught on because it was (and continues to be) an awesome showcase of one of our favorite plants: the almighty hop. For a style that has become the third most popular in America–behind only American Lager and American Light Lager–and seen a truly unexaggeratable amount of experimentation within the past several decades, the early IPA brewers clearly had something right.

You won't find many English IPAs on taplists in the States, but you will find American takes on it, and lots of them. We continue to love IPAs in this country, so however the history shook out, let's just be glad it did.

Modern Evolution

Accounts of its origins vary, but most agree that what became later known as IPA was pale ale prepared for shipment to India in the late 1700s and early 1800s. George Hodgson of the Bow Brewery became well-known as an exporter of IPA during the early 1800s, and is the first name frequently mentioned with its popularity. Burton breweries with their high-sulfate water were able to successfully brew IPA and began their domination of this market by the 1830s, around the time the name India Pale Ale was first used. Strength and popularity declined over time, and the style virtually disappeared in the second half of the 20th century. The style underwent a craft beer rediscovery in the 1980s. White Shield is probably the example with the longest lineage, tracing to the strong Burton IPAs of old and first brewed in 1829.