India pale ale

India Pale Ale
India Pale Ale from Fuller's Brewery.
Country of origin	England
Alcohol by volume	5.0% - 7.5%
Color (SRM)	6 - 14
Bitterness (IBU)	40 - 60
Original Gravity	1.050 - 1.075
Final Gravity	1.010 - 1.018

India pale ale (IPA) is a hoppy beer style within the broader category of pale ale.

The first known use of the term "India pale ale" is an advertisement in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in 1829. It was also referred to as pale ale as prepared for India, India ale, pale India ale, or pale export India ale, the high hop content preserving the beer for the long journey from England to India.

The term pale ale originally denoted an ale that had been brewed from pale malt. The pale ales of the early 18th century were lightly hopped and quite different from today's pale ales. By the mid-18th century, pale ale was mostly brewed with coke-fired malt, which produced less smoking and roasting of barley in the malting process, and hence produced a paler beer. One such variety of beer was October beer, a pale well-hopped brew popular among the landed classes, who brewed it domestically; once brewed it was intended to cellar two years.

Among the first brewers known to export beer to India was George Hodgson'sBow Brewery, on the Middlesex-Essex border. Bow Brewery beers became popular among East India Company traders in the late 18th century because of the brewery's location near the East India Docks and Hodgson's liberal credit line of 18 months. Ships transported Hodgson's beers to India, among them his October beer, which benefited exceptionally from conditions of the voyage and was apparently highly regarded among its consumers in India. Bow Brewery came into the control of Hodgson's son in the early 19th century, but his business practices alienated their customers. During the same period, several Burton breweries lost their European export market in Russia when the Tsar banned the trade, and were seeking a new export market for their beer.