GOD LOVE the eccentric Brit.
Inventors, tinkers, explorers, writers and just plain dreamers: These Monty Pythonesque characters may be loons, but they sure do spice up the rest of our dreary lives.
Oscar Wilde decorated with peacock feathers. Aristocrat Stephen Tennant spent his life in bed. Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater, hosted banquets for dogs. Keith Moon of the Who blew up toilets. Prince Charles talked with his plants.
And Pete Brown last year traveled 18,000 miles by land, sea and air from Burton-on-Trent, England, to Calcutta, India, just to taste an authentic India pale ale. He wrote about the adventure in the superb "Hops and Glory: One Man's Search for the Beer That Built the British Empire" (MacMillan, 2009).
OK, as a beer drinker who has bemoaned the paucity of full-flavored English-made IPAs, I can kinda appreciate Brown's eccentric trek.
Here is a style that evolved in the early 1800s as a pale ale whose added hops and high alcohol allowed it to survive its long voyage from England to colonial outposts in Mumbai and Calcutta. There is great uncertainty and myth surrounding its actual birth, but there is no doubt that IPA was the key to one of the world's greatest brewing capitals, the town of Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire.
Mainly it was the town's water, drawn from wells 1,000 feet deep, that made Burton's beer so distinctive. Rich with gypsum, the water enhanced the bitterness of hops to produce a thirst-quenching dryness.
The ale grew to such popularity that by 1874, Burton was home to 28 breweries. The largest, Bass, employed 3,000 men and covering 750 acres.
Over the decades, taxation, temperance and taste changes weakened and dulled British beer. Now owned by Coors, Bass strips Burton's famous water of its mineral content before brewing.
Surveying the English IPA scene, Brown writes, "Most IPAs sold in Britain today bear scant resemblance to the ales that went to India, beyond being wet and mildly intoxicating." At less than 4 percent alcohol by volume, they are "shadows of their former selves, just another of those arcane acronyms at the bar."
In the United States, we can satisfy ourselves with luscious, full-flavored American-style
IPAs that are close to the original. Spiced with ample amounts of aromatic hops, American IPA from the likes of Stone Brewing and Dogfish Head is now one of the most popular styles you'll find in the craft-beer aisle.
