Burton IPA

Pattinson's blog "shut up about barclay perkins" has much information about historic IPAs. The beers change a lot over time. Here's an article about a homebrew attempting to come close to a 19th century brew: https://beerandbrewing.com/a-recipe-for-historic-burton-ipa/. A commercial IPA was Pabst's Ballantine India Pale Ale of 2014. That was probably somewhat similar to the Ballantine IPA from Newark up to 1970, with the body and strength of an earlier time. It might have been an approximation of some British IPAs of the first half of the 1900s. I doubt that there are any current examples.

 

I think you can approximate the general specifications of older beers. It's another thing to say that the beer is similar. We just can't know. Even with throwbacks like the 2014 Ballantine IPA, which emulated a beer from 50 years ago, we don't know how similar they are. You can store a recipe, but not a flavor. I also tried Pabst 21st century Ballantine Burton Ale. While I thought that the IPA was very enjoyable, the Burton Ale seemed to me to have an in-your-face alcohol burn that just didn't go down easily. I'd imagine (and hope) that the original Ballantine Burton Ale was mellower.