All About Beer Magazine

1. IPA was invented by London brewer George Hodgson in 1785.

There are two falsehoods in this statement. Hodgson is often credited with ‘inventing’ IPA because he was the brewer who first gained supremacy in the Indian market. But for years before his rise to prominence, ‘pale ale’ was being advertised in the Calcutta Gazette. Well before Hodgson’s ale was advertised by name, brewers such as Bell’s of Burton-on-Trent were prominently featured.

IPA evolved from aged October ales, and it’s likely that several brewers had the idea of adapting these ales for the Indian market independently of each other. Any interested brewer would know that beers high in alcohol and hops, designed for cellar aging up to ten years, had the best chance of surviving a six-month sea journey. The Hodgson family gained prominence primarily through their commercial dealings with the East India Company rather than by inventing a new beer―most likely, they gradually evolved their recipe based on feedback from India.

As for the 1785 date―this is often cited because it is the date of an ad in the Calcutta Gazette for ‘pale ale, light and sparkling.’ The reason there are no prior ads is because this is the date the Gazette, the first newspaper in British India, was first published―not because pale ale didn’t exist in India before. There are records of ‘Burton and pale ale’ being drunk in Madras as early as 1717―giving the lie to the myth that this was a new style of beer invented in London later that century, and that London brewers predated Burton in India.

2. IPA became popular in England following a shipwreck in 1827, when an India-bound cargo was washed ashore near Liverpool.

This story is reported in Alfred Molyneaux’s book, Burton and its Bitter Beer, written fifty years after the supposed event, with no specific names, dates or sources. The shipwreck probably did happen. Ships were wrecked off the British coast all the time, and their cargoes were routinely sold off by insurers. So it’s highly likely that cargoes of India-bound beers were sold off in this way on a regular basis, but very unlikely that one specific incident introduced Britain to India Pale Ale in such a dramatic fashion. Bass and Allsopp, the two most famous Burton brewers, were both selling strong pale ale in Britain before 1827, and yet ‘India Pale Ale’ was not introduced as a term to describe beer until 1833―proving that that the style came around as a gradual evolution.

3. OK then, how about this—IPA became world-famous following Bass’ presence at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, which was visited by a third of the UK population.  That must be true—it’s in the definitive history of Bass Charrington, researched entirely from original daybooks, brewing logs, press cuttings etc.

Admittedly persuasive and cited regularly in newspaper stories about IPA from as early as 1870. But a cursory examination of the records of the Great Exhibition reveals that the event was dry. The organizers were worried that with the aid of alcohol, such a gathering of the masses could easily turn into a riotous mob. Some enterprising businessmen sold beer through the railings lining Hyde Park―where the Exhibition was held―and were promptly arrested. The only beer drunk inside was ginger ale.

4. IPA was remarkable because the grueling journey to India meant other beers, such as porter, were undrinkable by the time they arrived.

Early ads in Indian newspapers reveal the Anglo-Indians enjoyed porter, brown ale, cyder, even small beer, as well as pale ale. Even when IPA reached its zenith in the 1870s, porter was still being imported to India in huge quantities. IPA wasn’t the only beer that could survive the journey (porter was also high in alcohol, and could just as well have been highly hopped). It’s more that, when consumed ice cold, it was the beer that most suited the Anglo-Indian palate.

5. IPA was cask conditioned, with live yeast undergoing a vigorous fermentation in the cask during the journey to India.

Every brewer who wrote a guide to brewing India Pale Ale in the nineteenth century agreed that the worst thing that could possibly happen to the beer was for residual yeast in the cask to create a secondary fermentation. While filtration techniques were not what they are now, brewers tried their best to get as much of the yeast out of the beer as they possibly could before packaging it for the journey. Even then, between eight and ten percent of casks exploded en route. And at temperatures of over thirty degrees, yeast would have started to misbehave and add unwelcome Brettanomyces characteristics to the beer. So IPA was filtered.

Add to this the belief of Madeira winemakers that long exposure to moderately high temperatures over long periods had an effect comparable to shorter, more intense pasteurization, and IPA had more in common with a modern filtered and pasteurized beer than a ‘traditional’ cask conditioned ale―a style that was actually a descendant from IPA.