I owe my adoration of highly hopped beers to high school. Like most teenagers, geography, popularity, and access heavily influenced my drinking preferences. I grew up in Northern California, a hotbed of the burgeoning microbrew style of beer making. Besides the watery Bud and Coors, we were also able find (when a fake ID presented itself) flavorful beers like Sierra Nevada and Anchor Steam. These and other microbrews were the beers to drink among my Grateful Dead-following friends; our beer choice was as much a reflection of cultural affiliation as taste. Cruising around a concert parking lot, it was common to find ice chests full of cold Pete’s Wicked Ale, Red Nectar, and Sammy Adams sold for a buck—no ID required. We were about twenty-five years too late to be real hippies, but we were just in time for the good beer.
In the years to follow, I could usually pick Sierra Nevada out of a line-up. I liked the pale ale hoppiness, unaware that beers with more hops even existed. When I first tasted a Lagunitas India Pale Ale, I didn’t know what the “India” meant, but I knew I liked the beer.
India Pale Ales originated in the 18th century, when English brewers were trying to figure out a way to ship their brews to the East Indies without spoilage. British troops and colonists living in India wanted their motherland beer, but the voyage from London to Calcutta was long, hot, and without refrigeration. Beers usually arrived tasting like the last sip of a forty-ouncer.
To overcome this most pressing problem, George Hodgson of the Bow Brewery in East London came up with a recipe to prevent spoilage. Taking the traditional pale ale recipe, he greatly increased the hops and the alcohol content, both of which have antimicrobial properties. The beer was able to survive the journey, reaching India in a highly drinkable form—and ta-da! a new beer was born. India Pale Ale.
The most distinguishing flavor in an IPA comes from the hop plant (humulus lupulus), which is added to many beers but in larger quantities to an IPA. Hops add a distinct flavor that people usually either love or hate. They impart a bitterness that counteracts the sweetness of malt and aromatic flavors like citrus, floral, and pine. Hops are in the same family as the cannabis plant (cannabaceae), so they have a similarly pungent, floral smell (or so I’m told).
