How two men and a hound embraced the power of the hop
Ten years ago Brewdog began with two men and a hound in Fraserburgh. Now it employs 600 people around the world and is at the centre of the craft beer revolution. In this extract from their first book celebrating great ale, James Watt and Martin Dickie tu
Variety is the spice of life, so the saying goes, and craft brewers embrace this every time they mash in. The range of different beer styles (including spiced beers) is vast, with new variations and permutations invented every week by brewers putting twists on old favourites. But in craft beer, one particular style rules them all – the India Pale Ale.
More than ABV, IBU or OMG the most important threeletter acronym in modern brewing is IPA. If craft beer is for the people, then IPA is for its true disciples. It is of-the-moment like no other beer, and symbolises both the desire of beer fans to seek out highly hopped alternatives to what they were drinking previously and the shift of outlook in breweries to keep them supplied with the pale and hoppy. As Garrett Oliver, brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery in New York, is fond of summarising, “When I started out, IPA was a traditional English style brewed by nobody. Now it is an American style brewed by everybody.” That sentiment hints at the biggest irony of all – as British craft beer drinkers are won over by the power of the hop, they are actually drinking a beer style that began life in their very own country.
The exact time and place the beer that became India Pale Ale was first brewed in the UK has been lost to history, but brewers have been selling pale ale – beer brewed with a significant proportion of pale malt – in London since the turn of the 18th century. The true dawn of the IPA was in the 19th century when it gained its world-conquering moniker.
Beer writer and historian Martyn Cornell, who has done more than any other to explore the genesis of this particular style, has torpedoed many a myth about how IPA became so popular – uncovering the fact that beer had been shipped to the newly established Indian colonies for decades prior to the common adoption of the “India Pale Ale” name.
In fact, the majority of the British beer drinkers in India at that time preferred what they had drunk at home before they joined the East India Company – and that happened to be porter. It was the officers and gentry who (in scenes repeated throughout history) let their tastes differ from the men they commanded, and chose to drink the paler beer instead.
This “pale ale for the Indian market” was then sold into the drinking dens at home, and changed the drinking habits of a nation. Being more highly hopped meant that it lasted longer – the original intention of adding hops to beer was as a preservative rather than a flavour enhancer – so beers destined for shipping to warm climates often contained double the amount of Kentish hops.
As the beer morphed into “East India Pale Ale” in the mid-1830s it was well on the way to dropping the first of those words from its name and becoming a mainstay for British drinkers, whether they lived in Calcutta or Clapham. After the East India Company was wound up and Britain turned its attention elsewhere, public houses at home still continued to dispense pale ale and IPA.
Served on draft, over time these beers became lighter in body and strength, as fitted the
“When I started out, IPA was a traditional English style brewed by nobody. Now it is an American style brewed by everybody”
public mood. With a toasty, bready backbone of pale ale malt, the hop levels – usually East Kent Goldings – ensured they were crisp and refreshing, but it was another adjective by which they increasingly became known, reflecting their acquired (but not soon forgotten) aftertaste – bitter.
As the alcohol levels continued to drop, bitter became the true drink of the working people of Britain. In time, it was the brewers of another old British colony that discovered the joy of the IPA: the United States of America. Here, a revolution in homebrewing in the 1970s and ’80s led a nation – and then the wider world – to embrace the power of the hop.
American brewers resurrected the Englishstyle India pale ales with the ingredients they had to hand. Instead of earthy, floral hops from Kent, they had hops from the Pacific Northwest that sang with grapefruit, orange and other citrus notes as well as sticky pine and resin. The results were transformative, and it all began with a single variety – Cascade.
Anchor Brewing’s Liberty Ale, released ahead of the
200th anniversary of the American Revolution, was based on English pale ale, only the use of Cascade hops resulted in something very different. As Liberty hit the bars and shops in 1975, its clean and dry flavour profile won instant converts. Using whole-flower hops and then dryhopping techniques, the San Franciscan brewery truly pioneered the style.
Even though it was referred to as American pale ale, Anchor Liberty is often held aloft as the first US craft-brewed IPA – and it was the first of many. Pale, hoppy beers lit a fire under the resurgent American brewing scene then, and have become even more seismic since. So just what is it about these beers that has captured the craft beer zeitgeist?
Well, firstly and most importantly, it’s about the flavour – the tastes of beer drinkers change with every generation, and for the largest cohort today it is the citrus that leads.
This then plays into the second reason – the available varieties of hops skew toward those with high levels of alpha acids, which bring bitterness and aroma in abundance. The USA, New Zealand, Australia – New World hops are it.
All hops are amazing, though, of course – the spicy noble Germanic and the earthy British hops that give blackcurrant elements to beers are no less incredible. But the market goes with the hot hand, and those from (in particular) the Yakima and Willamette valleys of the northwestern USA have the hops that craft breweries are craving. Supply and demand have always driven the IPA machine.
It’s also due to familiarity. As people become more aware of beers with this flavour profile, they know what they will get when they see those three letters on a label. A random punt on a beer from time to time does everyone good (and some drinkers gravitate toward new things at every opportunity) – but IPAS are instant and accessible through this familiarity.
There’s a reason that Against the Grain Brewery in Louisville, Kentucky, has a beer called simply Something Hoppy – it’s what a significant proportion of their customers ask for when they wander into their brewpub. IPA has become the self-fulfilling prophecy of craft beer: more and more people are becoming educated as to the amazing flavours that it can deliver – the refreshment, the dry bitterness.
It’s incredible how people’s perceptions change. As this awareness increases and IPAS have become more popular, breweries have kept up with the game by adding them to their repertoire. So they appear on the shelves and bar counters more often. Here, people see them and try them, so in turn gain a taste for the resinous, the citrus and (above all) an appreciation of exactly what hops are capable of.
And with IPA, they can deliver flavour in abundance…
● Brewdog: Craft Beer for the People by Richard Taylor with James Watt and Martin Dickie is published tomorrow by Mitchell Beazley, £20