The difference between Pale Ale and IPA

Time to re-read Macbeth. Some things are never not apropos.

 

Many times pale ales and IPAs are indiscernible. I have had Pale ales that are hop bombs with a 6.5% ABV and IPAs that are weak in the hop area with a 7% ABV. When you brew something you can pretty much call it what you want for marketing purposes -

 

Which was exactly the case in the nineteenth century when it all began

 

Out of curiosity; which modern brewery was the first to call their pale ale an IPA and why did they decide to call it an India Pale Ale rather than a Hoppy or Strong pale ale? I doubt it tasted similar to the original or that there was a demand for the revival of an obscure 19th century beer.

 

In the US, India Pale Ales had been brewed continuously, from the 1850s* into the start of the US "craft era" in the late1970s-early 1980s; at the time, the lone survivor being Ballantine India Pale Ale. The first US "craft" India Pale Ale so-labeled was Bert Grant's, and he acknowledged the inspiration and existence of BIPA in his book, The Ale Master.

Some other post-Repeal US IPAs and US India Pale Ales that pre-dated Ballantine's (circa 1878).

*Except for that unfortunately "break" from 1919 -1933 or so.
** The original brewery was P. Ballantine & Sons - by the period noted by Grant, it was brewed by the Falstaff Brewing Corp.

 

Would the same hopping technique used for.shipping to India have been employed for shipping to north america? Did england ship much beer to the colonies?

 

I am uncertain which commercially brewed beer was branded as an India Pale Ale but maybe it was Bass in 1841:

Then, on April 15 1841, the following advertisement appeared on page seven of The Times:

“EAST INDIA PALE ALE – BASS & Co respectfully acquaint the public that a printed list of the bottlers of their INDIA ALE may be procured on application at the London Store, 49 Great Tower-street, where it may be had in casks of all sizes. This particular kind of ale differs greatly from the common malt liquors. It is more perfectly fermented, and approaches nearly the character of a dry wine; it has the light body of a wine combined with the fragrance and subdued bitter of the most delicate hop. That it is wholesome in an eminent degree is proved by it being drunk as the common beverage in India, where, from the nature of the climate, nothing which is not friendly to health can be used as an article of diet by Europeans. Many of the faculty also prescribe this ale to invalids. Dr Prout, who has examined that brewed by Bass & Co, in his work on diet &c, especially recommends it to weakly persons on account of its dryness, its mild tonic properties, and because it is not liable to turn ascecent in the stomach as other malt liquors are.”

Cheers!

 

I would imagine some of the beer the UK shipped to North America was, but I've never come across any reliable source's specific info on India (Pale) Ales shipped to the US during the Colonial period.

I think, because of the "patriotic" promotion of the US brewing industry dating back to the 19th century ("The pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock because they ran out of beer" "Geo. Washington brewed beer at Mt. Vernon" "Colonists drank Pumpkin beer" etc) right up until today (when the largest craft brewer's flagship brand is named after a failed maltster, "Samuel Adams") that people sometimes forget that beer just wasn't a big factor in the Colonial period. Here's how George Ehret (the largest lager brewery in the US in the 1870s) put it in his 1891 book, Twenty-Five Years of Brewing.

Lots of the early commercial brewing in the US took place in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, but even in the other brewing centers of Philadelphia and Boston, the early breweries were often hampered by domestic barley and hop shortages, costly imported malt and hops, lack of malting facilities, taxes imposed by their home countries, etc. So, imports did exist, from both the UK and the Netherlands but the beer market in general was tiny - cider was king, later replace (as noted by Ehret) by distilled spirits.

The Alcoholic Republic's per capita stats don't even list beer until decades after the Revolution, when the alcoholic consumption (15 y.o. and over) looked like this in 1810:
Spirits - 8.7 gallons
Wine - 0.6 gallons
Cider - 30 gallons
Beer - 1.3 gallons

This roughly agrees with Ehret's "...per capita consumption (of beer) amounted to 4.98 quarts..." for the same period. He also notes that US total beer production, from 129 breweries, in 1810 was a mere 5,754,737 gallons (not barrels) and imports and exports were about the same, with imports totaling 93,458 gallons. Not much but actually a larger percentage at around 1½% than imports would be into the 1970s.





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JK, I attended a presentation at the 2013 NHC on the topic of brewing in Colonial America and the presenter emphasized that in Colonial America brewing was predominantly a homebrewing activity with the woman of the household typically the family brewer. He then went on to state that the industrialization of brewing was more of a 19th century thing.

Given that most of the brewing was conducted my homebrewers I wonder how they could have obtained statistics here.

Cheers!

 

As was the much more popular cider and applejack (via freezing), of course, and, to a lesser extent (save for rum from the West Indies, etc) distilled spirits.
(You couldn't have had a Whiskey Rebellion without it.)

The beer stats are from 1810, based on the licensed commercial brewers of the time. Otherwise, I guess for more info one has to refer to the 15 page Appendix One "Estimating Consumption of Alcohol" in The Alcoholic Republic (which I cited) and the footnotes therein. (Too damn much typing for me).

 

And since it is my understanding that the majority of beer was brewed at home at that time it seems to me that "Beer - 1.3 gallons" is a misleading statistic.

Understood. I do appreciate the information you provide.

Cheers!