Historical IPA

[ktrain]

Question, the original IPA was served out of a barrel in India, correct? I'm a History major from way back when and I'm the 1900s and even today refrigeration is not all that common in India. Except in the case of the high altitude areas, India is subtropical and most likely "cellar" temperatures do not match those of 1800s/1900s England. Therefore in recreating and authentic IPA shouldn't it be served at room temp? More a condition of the environment and for my tastes chilled is better for any drink, other than coffee, is more to my liking. Anyways I'm drinking a warm American IPA now and if I was stationed in India I the 1800s or visiting friends there today I don't think I'd complain. What are your 2 cents?

 

[corax]

It would certainly have been warm. It might have been flat too, and probably had a good deal of Brettanomyces and acetic character.

To recreate, mix 3 parts Orval, 1 part Geuze, 1 part Guinness Extra Stout, and a shot of vodka. Let sit overnight open and at room temperature. Enjoy!

 

[kh54s10]

I don't know of the original IPA. But the "India" part for IPA came from the British adding more hops to a beer to preserve the beer on ships travelling from England to India and back in the colonial days. So I would say that most of the time the beer was brewed in England.

It would not have been as pure as an IPA today. The malts are better modified, the hops have been selectively grown for centuries since then. And yeast is much more clean of contaminates being produced in modern laboratory settings.

It would probably have been awful compared to today's standards and certainly warm to hot depending on where the ship was when the beer was drunk.

 

[rhys333]

I don't know of the original IPA. But the "India" part for IPA came from the British adding more hops to a beer to preserve the beer on ships travelling from England to India and back in the colonial days. So I would say that most of the time the beer was brewed in England.

It would not have been as pure as an IPA today. The malts are better modified, the hops have been selectively grown for centuries since then. And yeast is much more clean of contaminates being produced in modern laboratory settings.

It would probably have been awful compared to today's standards and certainly warm to hot depending on where the ship was when the beer was drunk.

Oh, I don't know. It might have been pretty good, though very different from modern interpretations no doubt. I had a really good brett IPA from Dieu du Ciel out of Quebec a while ago. By the time I got it, it had been bottled 8 months or more and the brett had chewed through the hop character but there was a nice bitterness and funk to it. I imagine the original IPA's might've been something like this, but with a stronger malt profile.

 

[deere322]

Poke around this guys blog - http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/
All sorts of historical info on IPA's.

If I recall from reading his blog or watching a youtube video, porter was the most shipped ale to India not IPA.
Porter was for soldiers, IPA was for officers.

 

[Steveruch]

If I recall from reading his blog or watching a youtube video, porter was the most shipped ale to India not IPA.
Porter was for soldiers, IPA was for officers.

Yes it was. A lot of brewers hopped IPA so much that it was undrinkable for up to a year.

 

[kevin58]

Question, the original IPA was served out of a barrel in India, correct? I'm a History major from way back when and I'm the 1900s and even today refrigeration is not all that common in India. Except in the case of the high altitude areas, India is subtropical and most likely "cellar" temperatures do not match those of 1800s/1900s England. Therefore in recreating and authentic IPA shouldn't it be served at room temp? More a condition of the environment and for my tastes chilled is better for any drink, other than coffee, is more to my liking. Anyways I'm drinking a warm American IPA now and if I was stationed in India I the 1800s or visiting friends there today I don't think I'd complain. What are your 2 cents?

You should check out the blog by Ron Pattinson. He is the authority on English beers from the 1800's to present. http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Question, the original IPA was served out of a barrel in India, correct? I'm a History major from way back when and I'm the 1900s and even today refrigeration is not all that common in India....What are your 2 cents?

You don't know your history - or your engineering, or what a Brit will do for a cold drink! ;-/

India has a long history of passive cooling - this modern building builds on those ancient techniques - and evaporative cooling was used to make ice locally in the early days of the Raj - by the tonne. But this wasn't very efficient, and a huge trade in ice from Norway and New England developed in the early 19th century, peaking at 146,000 tonnes to India alone in 1856, before the British government built their own ice plants and then commercial ice plants started trading in the 1870s.

After all, the Raj was the home of the gin and tonic, and you can't have a G&T without ice! But the beer would also have been served at the right temperature, at least in officers' messes and other government buildings - obviously a soldier on the march doesn't have the same luxury, but that would also be true today.

As for "It would not have been as pure as an IPA today....hops have been selectively grown for centuries since then" - WTF? Export beers like IPA generally used Goldings - the same variety you can get today, and just as "pure" as Citra or whatever. Sourness was long-recognised as a fault rather than something to be tolerated - you see barrels of porter being rejected for sourness in the 18th century - and the whole point of 100+ IBU beers was to keep acetobacter at bay. And any Brett was more likely to be claussenii rather than bruxellensis, so probably wasn't overtly "Bretty" like a Belgian beer.

Just as people tend to romanticise how good the past was, they also underestimate how technologically sophisticated things were in the past - particularly in Victorian Britain. These beers were being made on an industrial scale by sophisticated breweries in ruthless competition with each other - there wasn't much room for second-rate beer, and it wasn't as bad as others in this thread have made out.