On January 24, 1863 The South Australian Weekly Chronicle in Adelaide published a article on India Pale Ale, a reprint from the Illustrated London News.
It was more or less an advertorial for Allsopp, the great Burton-on-Trent brewer. Yet, despite the boosterism – to some extent a ruling Victorian notion – considerable useful information was conveyed, both for the early development of IPA and technically for its production.
The writer recalled the time IPA was new in London, and described the odd effect it had on people not used to it.
In beer-historical terms there is something special about IPA, as the success of the modern, American-inspired example continues to demonstrate.
For one thing, unlike mass-market lager, IPA never was commodified into blandness.* Even its attenuated form in Britain before craft brewing, bitter, retained a vigorous character.
Yet it can’t be denied that bitter ale and real ale declined significantly with the success of lager and closing or takeover of so many local breweries. That has continued to this day, and should have been the end for IPA as a significant brewing phenomenon.
After all, there are no double acts, as the saying goes. Yet IPA proved the contrary, in this case, proved a phoenix.
It rose again, steadily from the early 1980s, via the citric-tasting American IPA. Today, we know it world-wide as the premier style of craft brewing (whether West Coast, hazy, black or more – it is still IPA).
Though it is, in many ways, the obverse in merits to what the 1863 article described. Then, IPA was viewed as a more temperate alternative to brandy-and-water and double stout, tipples it partly displaced.
Its strong bitterness was not liked initially but people accustomed to it. The drink gained its spurs as a “tonic”, or quasi-medicine, and was often advertised as such.
Today, IPA, whose average strength is similar to that of 1863, is sought out because it is stronger beer and strongly bitter, certainly by comparison to standard lager or cider, especially in the UK.
Extracts of the 1863 article follow. Note: a “griffin” was a Briton newly arrived in Raj India, a greenhorn we might say today.
In India, as may presently be shown, this delightful beverage has been known and appreciated since the early part of the century; but in England it was long considered with us a potation fit only for exportation, and had to work its way gradually and laboriously ere it could obtain favour. We well remember the first appearance of pale ale in the metropolis, when our beloved Sovereign was quite a newly-crowned Queen. People made wry faces at it at first, talked about gall and wormwood, and disparaged the new ‘Indian ale’, as it was called, as a nauseous potion, fit only for Indian ‘griffins’ with no palate, and Indian Judges of Sudder Adawiut with no livers.
Speedily, however, it was discovered that the sparkling, brightened decoction of malt, hops, and pure water known as pale ale was in verity the ‘cup that cheers and not inebriates’— that it did not stupefy or lead to congestion and heartburn like double stout— that it did not tend to vertigo and the endangerment of the centre of gravity like Scotch ale taken ‘so early in the morning’ — that it did not lower the system or impair the digestive organs like soda-water— that its alcoholic properties were sufficient for gentle stimulation but not for intoxication— that its medicinal qualities were manifold; and that in many cases its moderate consumption gave health to the invalid, and made healthy persons healthier. In process of time pale or bitter ale became a great fact.
It has been called the champagne of the middle classes; but it is ten times more palatable than bad champagne, and twice as wholesome as the very best. Pale ale, having made its mark, has continued year after year to increase in popularity. That popularity has now attained an amazing pitch. Everybody drinks pale ale, either in bottle or in draught. It refreshes the Royal Duke at his modest Horse Guards lunch — it consoles the subaltern pining in his hut amidst the desolate boredom of Aldershott — it is the solace of the commercial traveller, who is beginning to eschew those potent magnums of brown brandy and water of which the abuse is so pernicious. Pale ale relieves the dulness of a sea voyage. Pale ale is to be had at the refreshment-rooms of every railway station in the kingdom.
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*Some “keg”, and bottled or canned versions of pale ale did end as rather bland, but none gained the importance of the lager tribe, the Foster’s, Carling’s, etc.