IPA - From bitterness to fruitiness

First of all, what is a “Pale Ale”? This English word simply identifies high fermentation blond beers. “Pale” refers to the colour of the beer, and “Ale” stands for a top-fermented beer.

To understand why “India” was added to the name of this type of beer, we have to go back to the 18^th century, during the British colonial period. The troops of the British East India Company, who couldn’t find beer in the country, decided to bring it to the new territories. Unfortunately, the beer did not withstand the long journey at sea and was undrinkable at its arrival in Indian trade ports.

To overcome this problem, the exporting breweries created new brews that could be better preserved. To do this, they increased the alcohol content and used the only natural preservative available, hops. They added massive quantities of hops during the brewing process, thus allowing the beer to be kept for a much longer period. The result was a beer with strongly pronounced notes and  flavour and, most importantly, genuine and refreshing tartness. This became the India Pale Ale, a very popular premium beer. One of the most faithful representatives of this category is the IPA from the Shepherd Neame brewery.

These beers were widely drunk in India and Britain, until they almost disappeared at the end of the 20^th century, due to a new tax on beers with high alcohol content. However, this style made a huge comeback in the 1990s, especially in the US, with the Stone brewery’s IPA.

Today, this type of beer has become very popular worldwide. Thanks to the different varieties of hops created over the past 20 years, IPAs can have a palette of varied flavours and accents, with flowery, fruity, herbal, resinous, spicy, lemony notes, etc. The best known is certainly the Punk IPA from Brewdog.