Allsopp: restoring a great Burton IPA

A new India Pale Ale – Allsopp’s IPA – recalls the hey-day of pale ale brewing in Burton-on-Trent. The beer is the result of the discovery of old brewing recipes in a ledger in Leeds.

The beer is owned by Jamie Allsopp of Allsopp’s Brewing Company. He is the seven times great-grandson of Samuel Allsopp, one of the 19^th century Burton brewers who turned IPA into a global beer.

Jamie’s 4.4 per cent beer is brewed by the Kirkstall Brewery in Leeds where master brewer Steve Holt has spent years researching old beer styles. He came across the ledger that contains the handwritten recipes for Allsopp’s IPA, Pale Ale, Double Diamond, Stout and Arctic Ale.

Jamie Allsopp says his interpretation of IPA is inspired by the 19^th century recipe but is not a clone. Brewed with Golden Promise malting barley and Challenger hops, it’s a modern beer.

“We haven’t produced a museum piece,” Jamie adds.  “The IPA has the malt character, balance and bitterness that belong our brewing heritage but it’s unmistakably a contemporary cask beer.”

The beer has a dark copper colour with herbal and spicy hops, rounded bitterness and a robust malt backbone.

The first beer brewed for export to India was made by George Hodgson in his brewery at Bow Bridge, East London. He learned from sailors working in the nearby East India Docks that boats to India left half empty and shipping rates were low. As a result he started to send October Beer to the sub-continent. October Beer was a pale beer using the first malts and hops of the harvest and aged for a year before release.

Hodgson thought the long voyage to India would be similar to the ageing process. He was right. His beer arrived in fine condition and became popular. The style quickly became known as India Pale Ale.

When Hodgsons son Mark took over the brewery he made the mistake of not paying his bills to merchants in India. As a result, Campbell Marjoribanks, a leading member of the East India Company that controlled trade in India, invited Samuel Allsopp to make a beer for the India market.

According to a legend, when Allsopp presented his head brewer, Job Goodhead, with a sample of Hodgson’s beer, Goodhead spat it out in disgust, deterred by its extreme bitterness.

But he made a trial brew in a tea pot and added to the malt and hop character as the grain and hops would help keep the beer in good condition on the sea journey to India.

Allsopp’s IPA became one of the most popular beers at home and abroad and established Burton as a centre of world brewing and IPA as a global style.

•Allsopp’s IPA is on cask at the Blue Stoops, 127-129 Kensington Church Street, London W8. The pub is run by Jamie Allsopp and takes its name from Samuel Allsopp’s first pub in Burton.