IPA Myth

@jesskidden

@marquis

Figured we'd just end this thread quick with fact as opposed to opinion.

 

Here is one of the more authoritative sources (being both British and an historian of beer) who sorts things out nicely:

https://zythophile.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/four-ipa-myths-that-need-to-be-stamped-out-for-ipaday/

https://zythophile.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/ipa-the-executive-summary/

 

Beer was available.
Drinking was involved.
Decisions were made.
Much laughter was had.
People forgot why.

This is also a lesson in hops being used for preservative and keeping purposes. But, that's another story which people have tended to forget as well.

 

I thought perhaps this was a new name of an IPA.

 

Read Mitch steele's ipa book. A ton of history about IPAs and debunks the myth about hops were added for the voyage. Beers were often stored months or years before even being shipped. Also, porters were shipped and they were just fine.

"IPAs" were being shipped from England over the Indian Ocean but hops weren't added to preserve the beer, that is a myth.

 

...in other words, if the voyage story is BS, than why "India" at all?

 

I've felt that the "IPA myth" has become a bit of a myth in and of itself. People are all too eager to point out someone's inaccuracies and wind up overdoing it. You shouldn't debunk one oversimplification with another oversimplification.

 

Damn, I guess there's no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny either

 

I believe the hoppier versions were originally more popular in India, and referred to as "pale ales for India". The "BS" portion of the myth is that the style was born out of necessity to survive the voyage.

 

Calling @patto1ro.

 

if you have the time and patience read Hops & Glory. good read and answers all the IPA questions plus many many more about Anglo-Indian drinking at the time in question.

 

IIRC Mr. Pattinson always contends Porter was much more popular than pale ale among British troops in India, and that hopping of beer had been done, even moreso than today, for both Porters and pale ales through history, including before England colonized India.

I see he is tagged here so I hope he speaks for himself (again) on the matter. Our ignorance at some point must be wearing on him hee hee.

 

19th Century Marketing

 

Because it was a style of beer the colonials remembered from home....the attribution of "India" Pale Ale is probably more obscure, but the reasons seem plain enough.

 

Mitch Steele covers the history of IPA in his book; Chapter 2 is entitled The 1700s and the Birth of IPA.

I was able to discuss IPA history with Mitch Steele at the 2013 National Homebrewers Conference when he signed my book. He thoroughly researched this topic including communicating with Ron Pattinson, Martyn Cornell and others. The tricky part is that there are no known brewing records of the ‘first’ IPA (Hodgson’s Pale Ale) so there are some missing details. For example, there is no documentation on what was the Original Gravity of Hodgson’s Pale Ale of circa 1800. Mitch is of the opinion that Hodgson’s Pale Ale had an Original Gravity of 1.070 but that is just his informed opinion.

Cheers!


Edit: On page 36 Mitch Steele writes: “From pricing tables, we can see that Hodgson’s Pale Ale was priced to be about the same as beers of 6.5% abv and about 17.5 °P (1.070 OG).”

 

Regardless of accuracy or not - if the beer was intentionally made with a higher ABV and more hops to survive the journey, then that wouldn't be inadvertent

 

Pete Brown tells a good story in this one, history and his adventure intertwined.

 

That is a good point.

I re-read: http://www.prettythingsbeertoday.com/wp/our-beers/once-upon-a-time/once-upon-a-time-eip/

I took note of the below from Ron Pattinson:

“A couple of London brewers cornered the Indian Porter market: Whitbread and Barclay Perkins. Both brewed a special version of their Porter for export to India. Like IPA, the difference with domestic beers was the hopping. EIP was no stronger than standard Porter, but contained almost double the amount of hops.

The India trade was very important to Whitbread in the 1850s. In some years almost 30% of their Porter output was exported to India, hitting a peak of 50,000 barrels in 1860.”

That sure doesn’t sound inadvertent to me.

Cheers!

 

I think that hoppy porters were quite different from IPAs. It was remarked in the 1880s that some brewers were making "the black beer produced at Burton, which has been universally described as a mere black pale ale—i.e., though black in colour, its palate taste reminds one very strongly of the pale beers produced by Burton firms." yet nobody linked it to the hoppy porters of the time. But it's easy to forget that ale and porter came from two distinct brewing traditions , if a Victorian said beer he meant Porter , if he mentioned ale it would have been pale.