India Pale Ale History

I have not specifically read any accounts that circa 1800 IPAs had much of a sour taste. Maybe Ron (@patto1ro) has some input he could provide here.

The quote was from Mitch Steele on page 91 of his book. I would strongly recommend that you buy and read the Mitch Steele IPA book since it was thoroughly researched and well written. In the acknowledgements section of the book Mitch Steele specifically made mention of Martyn Cornell and Ron Pattinson (plus a bunch of others).

It was not totally uncommon for US breweries 'back in the day' to age beer as well before distributing it. For example Ballantine IPA was aged for one year before being packaged (keg or bottles).

Cheers!

 

"Fresh beer" does not mean that the lagers beers were not lagered for longer periods before they kegged or bottled (AB in the pre-Pro era noted that their beers were typically lagered for 3-6 months) or, for "stock" ales, aged for long periods - in the US, typically in bulk, rather than trade packages like kegs - before being racked or bottled and sent into market.

P. Ballantine & Sons was aging its IPA for one year before packaging right up into the early 1970s (same as their Brown Stout, which disappeared in the 1950s). Many other US ale brewers had long aging periods for their stock (as opposed to so-called "present use") ales even after Repeal - Feigenspan's IPA was aged for "two years or more", Albany's Beverwyck claimed their Stock Ale was "guaranteed to be not less than two and one half years old". Horlacher was even aging their Perfection lager beer for a year into the 1970s.

 

True, but Lagering is a much more controlled process than aging 5-7% above beer in wooden barrels in 19th England.

Was Ballantine using wood?

 

Mammut (a type of pitch) lined wooden horizontal casks of around 150 bbl. capacity.

Here's a pic of a small section of Feigenspan's aging cellar, a few years before next-door neighbor Ballantine bought them, and no doubt continued to use the same casks:

 

I guess sealed wood is safer than raw wood but then what was the point? Maybe they didn't want to spend the money on SS tanks. AB "beachwood" ages Bud with sterilized chips shot through the conditioning tanks in "torpedoes"

In the modern era I wouldn't mess with wood....unless I was a master of the black art of Belgian brewing

 

Another photograph of the Ballantine IPA wooden vats:

 

Well, eventually they would be . That 1939 shot is from the Christian Feigenspan Brewing Co. era (so, being pre-1943, predating Ballantine's owners buying the majority of stock in the neighboring brewery). Feigenspan referred to their IPA aging cask area as "The Monk's Cellar" - another photo w/caption and artist's interpretation below.

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* A slight poke at Ballantine's "Aged in the Wood One Year" India Pale Ale? ​

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The whole point of the way IPA was brewed was to stop it getting infected. It had two protections: heavy hopping and an extremely high rate of attenuation - often 95%. There was nothing left for any souring agent to feed on. Brettanomyces was an essential part of the process, as it helped achieve the low FG.

 

Actually, most beer historians don't think Hodgson "invented" anything-he brewed Pale Ale and Porter and shipped them both to India starting in the mid-late 1700s. Where the IPA really took shape, IMO, was when the Burton brewers started brewing beers to compete with Hodgson in the 1820s. Over the next 3 decades the style became very sharply defined and separate from Pale Ale. The Irish Sea crash is apparently a myth also. Dry-hopping in casks was a common practice, especially for casks shipped long distances, so really that practice wasn't developed for IPA specifically.

 

More info on shipwrecks here:
http://zythophile.co.uk/2011/08/04/four-ipa-myths-that-need-to-be-stamped-out-for-ipaday/
Click on the link in "Myth 4" to get a full write-up.

 

Martyn Cornell has managed to track down the shipwreck. It really did happen, just not in the year usually quoted.

 

And it must have been dry as dust to drink.

 

These horizontal vats look very like lagering vessels. Not at all like what you'd find in a UK brewery, where vats would have been vertical and IPA aged in trade casks.

Looks to me like an example of the crossover of German and British brewing methods in the US.

 

Here are some excerpts from Handbuch für den Amerikanischen Brauer und Mälzer by Ernst Hantke published 1897/1900.

Page 530:
"For light ales such as Present Use Ale, Lively Ale, Still Ale ca 1.25-1.5 pounds of hops per barrel are used, for strong ales such as Stock Ale, Pale Ale around 2.5 pounds of hops per barrel are used."
Page 553:
"Usually some hops are also placed into the barrel, especially for India Pale-Ale, for which around 0.5 to one pound of hops are used."
Page 553:
"Stock Ale" and especially "East India Pale Ale", which is brewed very strong - 17 degrees Balling and over - remains after the vat-fermentation in barrels for between 6 to 12 months and recieves, as was described above, a larger hop addition in the barrel."
Page 512:
"For the Lager-Ales, which are stored in the brewery for a longer period of time, often for a year, the amount of water for mashing and sparging relative to the grist has to be somewhat smaller, if one does not want to boil for too long, since these Ales known under the names: Stock Ale, India-Pale-Ale, are brewed to 16-18% Balling."

Compare this with the section on American Stock Ales from Wahl and Henius Handybook from 1902 page 816:

"Use from two to three pounds of hops per barrel,"

"Balling 16 to 18 per cent."

"After yeast-making is over let settle for two days, run into trade barrels, add one quarter pound of a good quality of dry hops per barrel"

"Store from three to four months"

Also this table containing analyses of some American IPAs can be added.

 

Yeah, I've often wondered how the German-born Christian Feigenspan, who started his brewery in 1875, became so known for his ales. Of course, that was not so unusual, since the German-run Krueger Brewing Co. also in Newark also brewed top-fermenting ales -so it may just have been that the market was there in the northeast.

Additionally, the post-Repeal Ballantine brewery had been built and expanded as their lager brewery, their ale brewery - closed in 1915 - had been 2 miles away along the Passaic River, next to their malt houses. So, that might partly explain the horizontal casks at both breweries. But, yeah, never really thought about... Floor space/ceiling height? Strength? Predominance of lager breweries meant tank builders specialized in horizontal in the US?
(Obviously, wooden fermentation vessels in both lager and ale/porter breweries were vertical.)

 

Woop! Woop! Woop! "IPA was high in alcohol" alert! Danger! Danger!

 

Are you trolling to wind me up, or have you simply not been paying attention to anything Ron Pattinson and I have written over the past 13 or so years? The beer Hodgson sold for shipping to India was of normal strength for the time, and although it was more heavily hopped than the beer sold at home, Hodgson was not the first person to do that to export beer. I have no idea where you're getting that "aged this beer in London for months" idea from: I know of no evidence that Hodgson was doing that. And the Irish Sea shipwreck was in 1839, when IPAs had already been on sale in Britain for years.

 

Keep up, Mitch, it's fnally been discovered that it wasn't a myth after all! :-)

http://zythophile.co.uk/2015/10/12/the-ipa-shipwreck-and-the-night-of-the-big-wind/