Though the international cultural and political reach of the United Kingdom might now be limited to the occasional export of a new Harry Potter Book, at one time the British Empire was the largest in the world.  For hundreds of years, the Union Jack flew all over the globe, from North America, to Africa, Australia, and Asia. Following us kicking their ass out in 1776, the jewel in the crown was India.  Exploiting India provided a great deal of benefit for the homeland, at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of many locals — from mineral wealth and spices to an export market for finished goods.  For some Brits, landing a stint in India was a cushy deal. But not all the colonials were upper crust.  For them, life in India was tough.   The weather was a bit warm. Home was far.

Naturally then, Brits in India wanted something to drink.  The local drink was a type of Arak , a variation of the Arabic word for juice, araq.  Arak’s tasting notes would read as “strong enough to knock down Gary Busey“ and so impure that it would cause illness.  The drink was a close relative of the (now much more improved) beverage still enjoyed throughout the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Brits were not big fans.  They really wanted something more like what they had at home.  Brewing beer since before the Normans landed and Frenched the place up, the English knew there way around barley and hops. In the nineteenth century, when the British Empire was at the height of its power, British brewing culture was flourishing, with a dizzying array of stouts, porters, and ales widely available across the sun-starved isles.

Parched Brits in India wanted something from home.  Thing is, some brews didn’t travel well.  Naturally on a longer journey, from say, England to the Indian empire (roughly four-thousand miles, which took a longer back then because there weren’t direct flights), ales went bad.  But although many say that beer couldn’t make it over, that’s not entirely true. Porters and stouts were able to make the trip quite handedly, and manifests from the earliest days of the East India Trading Company record their entry.

Most ales though, were unfit for the trials of the long journey.  And sometimes you just want ale.

Solution: increase the alcohol, increase the hops.  Alcohol helps strengthen the brew for the road, and the hops are a natural preservative.  Brewers at the time used an early version of Kent Goldings hops, a traditional English aroma hop.  Prior to casking, brewers added dry hops, and used a higher amount of sugar. Tinkering away at the problem from various angles, many brewers arrived at this modification simultaneously.   As a result, there is no single brewer credited with inventing what later came to be called the India Pale Ale.

The first big player was George Hodson’s Brewery, whose business solidified in the late 1700s due to geographic felicity.  The brewery happened to be located on the docks where cargo was loaded and unloaded.  The people at Hodson’s took advantage, and started shipping their pale ale to India.  In the 1820s, Allsop Brewery became another early supplier, and the formula was later perfected by Burton’s Brewery.

Alternately known as India Ale, Pale Ale as Prepared for India, and Pale India Ale, the hopped-up, higher alcohol ale was a great success with ex-pats in India.   The folks at home took note of the big flavor of this new ale as well, and by the early nineteenth century, demand for the product took off in domestic markets.  By the 1830s, India Pale Ale had earned a permanent spot in the pantheon of beers.

As Americans, it is our duty to take all things British and make them our own. They had the Magna Carta and Parliament, and we wrote the Declaration of Independence.  They had Ricky Gervais, we have Steve Carrell.  They had subtlety, irony, and wit –we have baseballs to the testicles.  Following in the tradition of cross-Atlantic modification, the American IPA is a slightly different beast than its British brethren.

The original American IPAs produced were close in taste and production to their cross-Atlantic cousins.  But we had prohibition here, which had a detrimental effect on beer production.  When cooler heads prevailed, and prohibition was repealed, drinking tastes and cultures were drastically different.  American beer drinkers tended towards lighter lagers, and the IPA was consigned to the background while the brewing giants exercised near monopoly on tastes for decades.  It wasn’t until the emergence of a strong craft brewing scene in the United States, commonly pegged as beginning in the 1970s, that the modern IPA began to see wide production.

The primary difference in British and American IPAs the hops.  British hops tend to have a floral spiciness. Ours tend more towards citrus notes.  We tend to favor the use of bold American hops – like the Centennial, Challenger, and Cascade varieties.  The distinction between American and British IPAs is somewhat difficult to pin down now, as the breadth and variation in IPA production in the United States is astounding.  What most share in common with their British ancestors is the use of dry hops – additional hops added to the young beer after fermentation, giving a fresh-hop aroma to the beer.

IPAs are now hugely popular in the American craft brewing scene, and have come to be a staple in the line-up of most respected microbrewers.  Just like in the 1950 world cup, it looks like we’ve beaten the Brits at their own game yet again. <Insert U.S.A! chant here>

High Seas IPA from the Michigan Brewing Company takes top honors as the winner of the 2010 U.S. Open Beer Championship.  Lagunitas IPA with a crisp citrus taste, is the best seller in California.  San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Liberty Ale is light bodied and a tad on the dry side.  Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo India Pale Ale hints at piney hops with slight bitters.  Long Trail IPA from Vermont. Sweetwater IPA from Sweetwater Brewing Company in Georgia, Bear Republic Racer Five, Firestone Walker Union Jack, Shipyard IPA from Maine . . . the list goes on.

Once a niche beverage for weary exploiters, the beverage has spread across the world of drink.  Now, you can sit on your porch and watch the sun go down, and enjoy the delicate balance of hops, an ingested testament to humankind’s enduring ingenuity in the face of brewing obstacles.  Thankfully, the sun has finally set on the British Empire, and former colonies have been liberated, and we have taken the IPA and made it our own.  Anti-colonialism, as it turns out, tastes a bit more hoppy, with some nice citrus notes.