Hop Day! Potosi Snake Hollow IPA 3

Drinking this week’s Potosi Snake Hollow IPA has locked it in at 3.5 stars for me. It’s growing on me, but I don’t think it’s going to get rated higher than this for me. Today we’re going to look at this style of beer, from a historical standpoint.

History of India Pale Ale

Hodgson and the Bow Brewery

In the early 1780s, a London brewer named George Hodgson of the Bow Brewery on the Middlesex-Essex border started exporting casks of a strong, amber, highly-hopped October beer. The strength of the beer suited the six-month sea voyage (and the hops didn’t hurt), and it arrived in superb condition. It became popular among East India Company traders and was apparently well received in India. After forty years of success, Hodgson’s sons came into control of the Bow Brewery and they eventually alienated the East India Company, bringing an end to Bow Brewery’s success in the India market.

Allsop Brewery

The Allsop Brewery in Burton-on-Trent was known for strong ales that were possible by the hard local water. They had been doing big business shipping a dark, sweet beer up the Baltic Sea and into Russia until a high tariff in 1822 caused them to lose their European market. In the void left by the failure of Bow Brewery, Allsop and other Burton breweries such as Bass and Salt looked to take advantage of the open Indian market. The paler, hoppy beer that Bow Brewery had been producer was very different from the dark, sweet Burton beers, so the Burton breweries developed a paler, crisper beer to replace the Bow beers. As it turned out, the hard, gypsum-laden water of Burton was better suited than London water for pale, hoppy beer. Burton India Pale Ale became preferred by merchants and their customers in India.

Popular with the Public

At some point, India Pale Ale caught on with the public, and the new beer’s popularity spread like that of porter before it. By the mid-nineteenth century, Pale Ales and India Pale Ales replaced porter as THE fashionable beer.

Myths
- Myth 1: IPAs were much stronger than other beers of the time.
- Myth 2: IPAs were developed to survive the voyage to India. Porter shipped to India at the same time survived the voyage without a problem.
- Myth 3: Barrels of India Pale Ale were recovered from a foundered ship, and the beer found wild popularity with the English drinking public.

Myth or no myth, I’ll probably perpetuate these just because I think they’re awesome!

Names

According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, this style of beer was originally known by a variety of names:
- Pale ale as prepared for India
- India Ale
- Pale India Ale
- Pale Export India Ale
- The first known use of the name “India Pale Ale” comes from an advertisement in the Liverpool Mercury newspaper on January 30, 1835.