A Convenient Story of IPA

Alright, we've kept you in suspense long enough!

What's this story about IPAs and hops?

Well the tale goes...while the British occupied India, the soldiers were entitled to a daily ration of ale. Rather than attempt to brew it in India with different equipment (or build a brewery so far from home), they'd ship the beer from England...past Europe, down & around Southern Africa, through the Indian Ocean, and on to India. Such a long journey took quite a bit of time, and without refrigeration the beer had a tendency to spoil. As we talked about last week, hops are antimicrobial, and more hops often meant keeping the beer from spoiling for longer. Hop it up more and more, and it'll last the long ship journey. When British soldiers returned from their tour in India, they'd grown fond of the heavy, hoppy brew they had, and the IPA, or India Pale Ale, was born.

But that's not quite right...

A bit convenient though, isn't it? Everything is so picturesque, it kinda makes you wonder if someone just decided to make up this fun story. Well, if you believe Malcolm Purinton, a beer historian and scholar from Boston's Northeastern University, the standard tale of the IPA is just that: a tall tale.

By the time the British were colonizing India (starting in 1858), they'd already been shipping beer across oceans for centuries! The Mayflower (in 1620, a good 230+ years earlier) carried one gallon of beer per person per day.

As it turns out, a savvy British businessman by the name of George Hodgson crafted a beer named after himself, the Hodgson Ale, around the 1820s. Brewed in October when hop prices started to fall for the year, it used a bumper crop of hops in each batch, leading to the extremely hoppy flavor we associate with the IPA. Mr. Hodgson also had an exclusive contract to supply the British East India Company with beer for soldiers. He eventually renamed his Hodgson Ale to "India Pale Ale" to appeal to British Imperialist pride. Advertisements from the 1900s show that Hodgson also brewed plenty of other beers that didn't quite stand the test of time, like the FPA (Family Pale Ale), Table Bitter Ale (TBA), and Keeping Stock Ale (KS).

Not quite as "fun" of a tale, but the truth never is quite as tidy as we want it to be.

[CNN Travel wrote a story covering this information in April 2024; their article can be found here.]