[BITList] Beers to You: Who put India into IPA?

[John Feltham]

A very important document!



From a correspondent…

 
Beers to You: Who put India into IPA? 

http://www.kenoshanews.com/life/food/beers-to-you-who-put-india-into-ipa/article_6923a530-b67f-50c0-a193-b6c2870ef6f3.html <http://www.kenoshanews.com/life/food/beers-to-you-who-put-india-into-ipa/article_6923a530-b67f-50c0-a193-b6c2870ef6f3.html>
India Pale Ale begs for an explanation, but IPA is perfectly understood.

This is no riddle but a recognition of divergence from this beer’s English origins in the late 1700s to the present storm of popularity in America.
One style was born out of necessity, while astute innovation gave rise to the other.

Roger Protz, an Englishman and acclaimed beer writer, documented India Pale Ale’s history in his book, “The Ale Trail,” published in 1995, and he offers an excellent narrative.
Beer for colonists

Britain colonized India in 1772, and as the population of British citizens and soldiers grew, so did the challenges of supplying them with beer.

The climate was too hot for beer brewing in India, so it had to be shipped from London, which presented real challenges. Protz refers to American craft brewer Thom Tomlinson’s research on the subject, which includes reference to the ocean temperatures between London and India from 1855-1884.

As if dramatic rocking motions of an ocean voyage weren’t bad enough, ale shipments would begin the three-to-five-month voyage in 52 degrees Fahrenheit seas, climb to 81 degrees in equatorial waters and drop to 65-69 degrees around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope before rising to 73 degrees and shooting to 83-86 degrees near the coast of India.

Care to guess how that affected the beer?
Flat, sour after long voyage

George Hodgson of Abbot & Hodgson’s Bow Brewery in East London was located near the docks used by ships arriving from India. He would’ve heard the complaints about brown ales and porters — the popular styles of that time — arriving flat and sour in Indian ports. Hodgson also learned that ships left London for India half-empty before returning full with valuable cargoes of spices and silks, so low shipping rates completed the opportunity.
Brewer modifies pale ale recipe

Since the mid 1750s, Hodgson had success brewing pale ale in London. It was one of the world’s first beers that was not brown or black. His experience as a brewer told him a high-alcohol beer with a large measure of hops would combine to protect the beer from going sour, so he modified his pale ale recipe.

Hodgson’s India Ale began shipping out in the 1790s, when coke fired kilns yielded pale-colored malted barley, rather than the darker, smoky malts from wood-fired malt houses. According to research by both Protz and Thomlinson, it is believed that the beer was about 6 percent alcohol, copper or reddish amber in color and very bitter.
This new beer found favor.
Exports rise dramatically

Between 1775 and 1800, beer exports to India rose from 1,680 barrels to 9,000, an increase that surpassed the previous 100 years. A good portion of that increase came from the Bow Brewery, which was now in the hands of Hodgson’s son, Mark. However, his monopolistic business practices upset the merchants and customers.
A director of the East India Company encouraged Samuel Allsopp, a brewer in Burton Upon Trent, to enter the India Ale market. This is where India Pale Ale really became a phenomenon, because Burton water was much better suited for brewing India Ale. A high level of sulphates promoted a more vigorous fermentation and better hop utilization compared with the soft waters found in London, which produced sweeter beers.

The resulting ales from Allsopp as well as other Burton brewers, including Bass, were clearer, the bitterness less perceptible and cleaner due to its dry finish. The extra aging time during the long voyage was now an asset.

By 1839 these new pale ales found favor among the British public, too. They liked the clarity, bitterness and refreshing character, while the development of England’s railroad system expanded the markets nationwide. Burton boasted 15 breweries in the 1840s, and by 1874 Bass was the world’s largest brewing company.
Scientific advances improve quality

Scientific advances came along at that same time, which improved quality and productivity. England’s brewers learned how to “Burtonize” their water by adding minerals.

Those same scientific advances built the lager revolution in Europe and America, which cut into pale ale’s popularity there. Austerity brought on by World War I and subsequent taxation based on alcohol content brings the first part of India Pale Ale’s story to a pause.

Fast forward to the 1990s, when America’s fledgling craft brewers found inspiration in Europe’s beer culture. They largely imitated German, Belgian and English beer styles; not just the contemporary styles, but the historical versions as well.

India Pale Ale’s return beckoned.
Resurrecting authentic ales

Brewers in England were fascinated with the thought of resurrecting authentic India Pale Ales, too. In 1994, the British Guild of Beer Writers organized a seminar to not only discuss the historical context but to gather and sample a variety of IPAs brewed for the event by leading British and American brewers.

The English renditions were all historically researched recipes and brewed as one-of-a-kind pilot batches, while the American submissions were commercially available at that time in the U.S.

One of those American brewers was Garrett Oliver, who had his Manhattan Rough Draft IPA served at that conference held in London. His work was favorably cited by Protz in his book. Oliver’s IPA was stored for two to three months in casks before being served, underscoring his view that “no beer should be called an India Pale Ale unless it could withstand a long sea journey,” Protz reported.

The seminar’s goal was to encourage British brewers to create commercial versions available to the public, and all these many years later that is happening, but they are American influenced.

Today, Oliver is a well-tenured brewmaster for The Brooklyn Brewery and the editor-in-chief for The Oxford Companion to Beer. I asked if he sees commonalities between English India Pale Ale and American IPA. “They are now one and the same,” he responded. “The original IPA would have used the classical English hops, which have a very different character to modern American varieties. Green King IPA (Bury St. Edmunds, England) is not an IPA by any stretch of the imagination. The hazy ‘New England IPA’ has now been taken up in the UK as well.”

“Some of these beers are very nice, but they bear no actual resemblance to the original IPA style,” he continued. “They’re dry-hopped, but the connection to IPA pretty much ends there. The shame of that is that the average consumer can no longer understand what ‘IPA’ is — black, white, session, milky-looking ... is ‘IPA’ simply any beer with hop character?”

“There is no accounting for fashion, though, and people will drink what they like, regardless of the name,” Oliver concluded. “Beer styles are very important for communication with consumers, and I fear we’re losing that part of the culture.”

Fergus Fitzgerald, head brewer at Adnam’s Brewery in Southwold, England, oversees a portfolio that includes four pale ales and five IPAs, many of which feature American hops. “IPA is certainly popular in craft brewing. They tend to be U.S. influenced,” he said. “There aren’t as many English IPAs as there would have been in the early 20th century.”

“There are still several IPAs from older breweries which would be unfamiliar to U.S. drinkers, like Green King’s IPA, at less than 4 percent and not high in bitterness or hop aroma. It is probably the largest volume beer called IPA in the U.K., but it’s an IPA as they were after the Second World War rather than the early 1900s,” he explained. “So IPA in the U.K. is a bit of a confused term for many beer drinkers.”

What is embraced on both sides of the Atlantic is the hop characteristics of today’s IPAs. One in four craft beers sold in America is an IPA, according to Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association.

Gone is the necessity of high levels of hop bitterness requiring months of aging to mature. Today it’s all about freshness to savor the many flavors of new hop varieties grown in the U.S. The less time in the bottle the better, as today’s IPAs will significantly degrade month by month.

For this generation of beer consumers, the sun is far from setting on IPA’s empire.

Bill Siel, a Kenosha News photojournalist, has been homebrewing since 1989 and has been involved in Kenosha’s craft brewing community since 2012. Since 1991, he has been a certified beer judge through the American Homebrewers Association’s Beer Judge Certification Program.





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