If cats have nine lives, then India pale ale can certainly lay claim to two. Its first span was relatively brief, not more than a hundred years. But during that time, this beer style refashioned 19th century brewing, not only in Britain but also on a world scale.
As the new millennium dawned and scores of new craft breweries opened in Britain and the United States, IPAs started to flow in ever increasing numbers.
Mark Dorber, at the White Horse Pub, convened a seminar on Burton ale.
As the name implies, IPA was brewed for Britain’s colonial trade, first for India and then for other parts of the empire. It was exported to the United States and then brewed there with gusto. The style may have spawned the lager revolution in central Europe, but it was a Faustian pact, and by the end of the 19th century, German lager brewers had driven IPA from most of the colonies.
In its second incarnation, IPA became a favorite of the craft brewing revolution in both Britain and the U.S., with dozens, possibly hundreds, of new interpretations of the style.
IPA is thought of, quintessentially, as the beer of Burton-on-Trent in the English Midlands. In fact, “India Ale” was first brewed in the late 18th century in London. Everything about that simple statement is astonishing. The beer was said to be much paler in color than the pervading styles of mild, porter and stout, yet pale beers were rare for the simple reason that most grain was kilned or gently roasted over wood fires that created brown malt and brown beer.
And London’s water, heavy in calcium carbonate, was better suited to the production of dark beers than pale ones. Yet one brewer, George Hodgson at Abbot & Hodgson’s Bow Brewery in East London, managed to create a beer that not only captivated drinkers in India but turned the craft of brewing on its head.
Starting with the Malt
In fact, pale malt had existed since the 18th century and was one of the constituents of “entire,” the first version of porter. But pale malt was expensive to make. Coal, not wood, was used as the fuel in malt kilns and coal was heavily taxed. When burned, it gave off gases that could give malt an unpleasant odor. It was not until coke—coal without the gases—was developed during the industrial revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries that pale malt was produced on a large commercial scale.
Hodgson, it must be assumed, had access to a modern, coke-fired malt kiln. He would undoubtedly have used large amounts of hops for bitterness and to keep his India ale free from infection. But the finished beer, as a result of London’s water, would have lacked the sharp, flinty edge of the Burton versions that came later. What is without doubt is that George Hodgson and his son Mark, who ran the company when his father retired, had a sharp eye for business.
Their brewery stood close to the East India Docks on the River Thames. The Hodgsons learned from contacts in the docks that sailing ships left London half-empty for India. Cargo rates were low for the outward voyage and this encouraged the brewers to export their India ale, as they heard that the British in India were unhappy with the dark beers sent them, which lacked the necessary refreshment needed in the torrid heat of the Indian sub-continent.
But Mark Hodgson, when he took over from his father, overplayed his hand. His brewery had created a virtual monopoly in India and he controlled prices. He often failed to pay his bills and upset his agents in India. He also made the supreme mistake of annoying the all-powerful East India Company that controlled most trade with the sub-continent.
As a result, in 1821 a director of the EIC named Marjoribanks told Samuel Allsopp, one of the leading brewers in Burton-on-Trent, that lucrative pickings were to be had in India. Marjoribanks told Allsopp that India offered a trade “that can never be lost: for the climate is too hot for brewing. We are now dependant upon Hodgson who has given offence to most of the merchants of India. But your Burton ale, so strong and sweet, will not suit our market.”
And the Burton brewers were desperate for new markets. Wars with Napoleon’s France had led to the loss of the Burton brewers’ lucrative Baltic trade. Allsopp, encouraged by his meeting with Marjoribanks, hurried back to Burton and handed his head brewer, Job Goodhead, a bottle of Hodgson’s India Ale. Goodhead tasted the beer and spit it out, affronted by its extreme bitterness. But he said he could replicate the beer and proceeded, in the finest English tradition, to make a trial brew in a teapot.
Allsopp soon had a consignment of beer ready for India. In a small town such as Burton, packed with breweries, news of the new beer spread as brewery workers mingled in taverns. Soon several of the other brewers, notably William Bass, Thomas Salt and William Worthington, had joined the India experiment. Within a decade, Allsopp and Bass accounted for more than half the beer shipped to Calcutta, twice as much as Hodgson. Throughout the 1830s, the two main Burton brewers sent some 6,000 barrels a year of pale ale to India. Hodgson went into decline and was bought out in 1885.
