Everything You Need To Know About IPAs
SHARE
Pixabay
So what’s the deal with India Pale Ales? Everywhere you turn, someone is ordering an IPA on draft or some one-of-a-kind bottle, so here’s your IPA starter pack so you can hold your own at any bar.
An India Pale Ale is a hoppy style beer within the Pale Ale family and it’s one of the main players in the craft beer industry. On the opposite end of the beer spectrum from light lagers, American IPAs tend to be more flavorful (and bitter) than typical English IPAs and can range in color from a pale golden to reddish amber. Hops, the flowers on the hop plant Humulus lupulus, are mainly used for stabilizing and flavoring the beer with bitter, zesty, and citric flavors. Hops have also been used in herbal medicine.
So where does the “India” part come in? One theory is that IPAs were originally created in England and the name came as a result of its popularity among the British troops stationed in India during the 19th century. This particular style of beer could survive the months-long trips from Britain to India through humid climates and without any refrigeration. Pale Ales during this time usually arrived stale and flat with offputting flavors and the extreme bitterness of the IPAs could overpower those flavors. The high alcohol content could get soldiers drunk way faster and maybe help them to temporarily forget their worries.
An article by Lucky Peach says IPAs are “the single most popular style of craft beer, accounting for nearly 30 percent of all sales annually—that’s over 150 million gallons of beer consumed each year. There are more than a dozen different subgenres of the hoppy style.” With microbreweries popping up all over the place, there are continuously new versions of IPAs being discovered and produced. If you can handle an IPA, there’s a vast world of beers out there for you to explore.
Next on
