There’s an amazing amount of inaccurate, made-up rubbish that has been written about the history and origins of IPA, or India Pale Ale. So read on, and turn yourself into an IPA mythbuster for #IPA day: Myth 1: “IPA was invented by a brewer called George Hodgson from Bow, in East London.” Fact: Hodgson was… Read More Four IPA myths that need to be stamped out for #IPAday
This is not going to make me popular in Pontypridd, and it will go down very badly in St Albans. But Otley Brewing Company, the widely admired Welsh brewery, and Roger Protz, doyen of British beer writers, have got together to revive a vanished classic and brewed entirely and utterly the wrong sort of beer.… Read More Argh no! Otley and Protz in Burton Ale fail!
I used to think Americans said “tidbit” because of some squeamishness over the word “tit”, but in fact “tidbit” is the older or original version, and it is the British who have been the lexical corrupters. (And in any case, if you believe the Oxford English Dictionary, which I’m not sure I do, “tit =… Read More An Imperial Stout cocktail and other titbits
In any modern account of the history of India Pale Ale, you’ll generally find a declaration that the casks of well-hopped beer sent out to India by ship via the Cape of Good Hope in the late 18th century matured and developed quickly in a way that the same beer kept at home in Britain… Read More IPA: the hot maturation experiment
Well, that was all rather too much: nearly 4,000 words and more footnotes than a Jerry Lee Lewis concert. So here’s the executive summary on what we know, what we don’t know, what we can justifiably assume and what we can’t assume about the history of India Pale Ale, and I promise to keep it… Read More IPA: the executive summary
(Note: three years on from this post, the earliest mention of the phrase IPA has been pushed back another six years: see here.) This is a truly historic document: the first known use of the expression India Pale Ale. It comes from an advertisement in the Liverpool Mercury newspaper published January 30 1835, a remarkably… Read More The first ever reference to IPA
I was lucky, I think, in having my first pint of Bengal Lancer IPA, Fuller’s latest offering, in the Prince Blucher in Twickenham, where it was in excellent condition: a couple of subsequent trials elsewhere in West London haven’t been quite as good, so to borrow an Americanism, “your mileage may vary.” But I don’t… Read More Two horsey beers and a short kipple
Had a great session last week with two Californian brewers, Mitch Steele and Steve Wagner of Stone Brewing in San Diego, who are in the UK researching India Pale Ale for a forthcoming book from the Brewers Association in the US. Since I’m the man that has annoyed a large swath of the American beer… Read More Ordinary to Britons, extraordinary to Americans
Click to read part 1 From 1823 the Burton brewers began to brew pale ales for the Indian market. I’m not going to go into the development of Burton pale ale here, but between them the big Burton brewers and Hodgson of Bow certainly never had a monopoly of the Indian pale ale trade. In… Read More IPA: much later than you think part 2
When do you think the expression “India Pale Ale” was first used? Much, much later than you’d imagine, and much, much later than the idea of a pale ale exported to the Far East. The term India Pale Ale does not appear in print until June 1837 (correction – a couple of years earlier, as… Read More IPA: much later than you think
