India pale ale (IPA)

British beer reached the East long before IPA had a name: company staff in Sumatra drank bottled beer in 1716, and imported pale ale was drunk in Madras by 1717, according to the Oxford Companion to Beer. George Hodgson began brewing at Bow, on the river Lea near the East India Dock, in 1751 or 1752 (sources differ). His success came from selling to the officers of East India Company ships on long credit. A Calcutta newspaper advertised pale ale in April 1784, "beer from Hodgson" first in 1801, and in 1822 "Hodgson's warranted prime picked pale ale of the genuine October brewing".

In early 1822 Campbell Marjoribanks, complaining that "we are all now dependent upon Hodgson", urged the Burton upon Trent brewer Samuel Allsopp to brew a pale ale for India; Allsopp's first consignments sailed in 1823. Burton's water, rich in calcium sulphate, suited it, and by the early 1840s Allsopp and Bass dominated the trade. Hodgson's was the first brewery to advertise "East India pale ale", in 1833; brewing guides date the name to around 1830.

Many accounts say Hodgson "invented" a special strong, heavily hopped beer to survive the long voyage. Martyn Cornell's study of the Calcutta advertisements found no evidence that Hodgson brewed a special beer for India: he sold the captains his normal October beer, a strong pale stock ale, and the voyage happened to improve it. The Oxford Companion entry on Hodgson likewise calls the invention claim inaccurate.

IPA faded in Britain in the twentieth century and was rediscovered by craft brewers in the 1980s; the modern American versions are a new branch inspired by the old beer, not an unbroken line.