Episode transcript:
Sound of train announcement
Pete Brown: The train would come in from Burton-on-Trent, just into the platforms up to our left up here. And the archways that we can see in the building were designed specifically to accommodate hogsheads of India Pale Ale. The pillars that we're standing next to, the width between the pillars is the width of, I think, about five or six hogsheads of India Pale Ale.
Rachel Stewart: You're using the word hogshead? What's that?
Pete: A hogshead is a size of a barrel, a wooden barrel, which would be about I guess three and a half feet high. You see them occasionally used in old pubs these days as tables. And it would go from here down to the docks.
Rachel: Can you tell us where we are and why that's got anything to do with what we're talking about today?
Pete: Yeah, so this is St. Pancras Station, one of the big, main train stations into London. And this station, which is a beautiful old, red brick building, with a magnificent hotel at the front, was built specifically to store barrels of India Pale Ale. So this entire floor of the station, which is now the Eurostar terminal, was a storeroom for India Pale Ale. That shows you how huge a business it was.
Music evoking a journey
Sound of St. Pancras station fades out
Rachel: Yeah, so if you happen to pass through the Eurostar terminal at St. Pancras Station in London (which is not far from Platform 9 ¾) just imagine those sweeping red-brick arches rammed full of enormous barrels of beer. That was Pete Brown, by the way, a food and drink writer we'll hear from throughout today's episode. I'm Rachel Stewart and this is Don't Drink the Milk – the podcast that takes you on sometimes perilous journeys around the world to better understand the things around us, like the beer we drink.
Music ends
Rachel: IPA is one of the most famous styles of craft beer. Especially, it seems, in the States, where it accounted for more than 40% of all craft beer sales in 2022. But it's got plenty of fans elsewhere in the world too, including among my fellow thirsty Brits.
Sound of beer garden
Man 1: Yeah, I've just drunk an IPA. I'm a fan of IPA.
Man 2: I do like IPAs, yeah. It's probably my most-bought beer.
Woman 1: Yeah, I feel the same. I feel like when we buy each other a drink, we'll go 'Oh what do you fancy?' and we go 'Oh just get me an IPA.'
Rachel: But within those trendy, hoppy notes is a story of empire, exploitation and evolution. It's a story that's hiding in plain sight, right there in the name: India Pale Ale.
Pete: Most people who drink it aren't aware that IPA stands for India Pale Ale. And when you go to non-English speaking countries, craft beer drinkers pronounce it 'ee-pa'. They just think it's a word.
Rachel: Back to those beer-drinkers in London. Do they know what IPA stands for…?
Man 1: That's a really good question, to which the answer I don't know…
Woman in background: 'I love beer'
Man 2: Uhhh... Indian! Indian Pale Ale!
Man 3: India? Indian Pale Ale, I think it is.
Sound of beer garden
Rachel: Ok, but did they know why it's called India Pale Ale?
Man 3: No, I've no clue.
Man 1: Absolutely not.
Man 2: I think so. It's because they used to transport beer from India to England?
Rachel: That's close-ish. But the wrong way round. This beer traveled from England to India back in colonial times. But how? Why? And what does this colonial hangover mean for beer-lovers around the world?
Music building
Priya: The real story of empire does not tally with the mythology that is most often disseminated in the British public sphere.
Pete: And it's a brutal, horrible, savage story, which has almost been erased from British history.
David: We should be in a situation where we're telling people the history of the IPA and where it came from.
Phone ringing
Different voices: "развален телефон", "Chinese whispers", "telefono senza fili", "telephone", "kulaktan kulağa", "Stille Post", "испорченный телефон", "téléphone arabe", "głuchy telefon", "Russian scandal", "Don't drink the milk"
Dial tone, sound of hanging up phone
Rachel: When our producer Sam came to me with an idea for an episode about beer, I was like ‘Yes. No questions, I’m in.’
Sam Baker: Easiest pitch I ever made! But to be fair, we've got a beer with real history here. I've been to a few beer tastings over the years where you often get this creation story of IPA – That back in the times of the British Empire, sailors and Brits living in India missed their beloved English Ale, because it couldn't survive that long journey halfway around the world without going bad. Until, one smart brewer threw in some extra hops and cranked up the alcohol content to help it survive that long journey to India, finally arriving in a drinkable state. Thus, IPA was born. Well, that's the legend anyway.
Rachel: But that's not how it really went down?
Sam: Not exactly. Now, it's true that hops – which are little green flowers used in the brewing process – they do help preserve beer, but it wasn't like this 'Eureka!' moment. People in England had been brewing longer-lasting beer for a while, things like porters and what were known as "October Ales". And these stronger October ales were the foundation for what eventually became India Pale Ale.
Sound alongside London canal
Pete: And one guy started sending this strong, heavily hopped October Ale. And when his beer got there, it sold better than everybody else's beer.
Sam: He was working with the East India Company – the main British trading company operating in Asia. But the brewery got a little too greedy. The East India Company decided to ditch them and get their beer elsewhere.
Pete: They went to a brewer in Burton-on-Trent. His beer hit India. And it was like nothing else before, put the other guy out of business completely.
Sam: They'd struck beer gold in Burton-on-Trent. Apparently, the minerals in the water of the Trent River Basin make delicious beer. Even today, if you're making a good IPA, you'll treat your water using a process known as Burtonization, which adds these minerals in.
Rachel: Ok but how does this delicious beer make its way from Burton-on-Trent all the way to India?
Pete: Yeah, so we're now just behind King's Cross and St Pancras stations, on the banks of Regent's Canal. And before railway existed, this canal was part of the network that brought India Pale Ale down to London and the Docks.
Rachel: Now, Pete knows a thing or two about the long voyage this beer would then make from here to India because… well, he's done it.
Pete: Yep, and with a barrel of beer in tow. The legend was that that journey aged the beer in a unique way. And so I thought, how does anyone know this? No one's done that journey since the Suez Canal opened in 1869. We need to get a barrel of beer on that journey again and see if it's true. And for some reason, I decided I was the guy to do it.
Sound of London canal
Rachel: Grab your life jackets, we're going aboard!
Music of a sailor’s pipe
Sound of bell ringing and ambience from a port
Pete: So we start off either in Liverpool or London on a big East Indiaman, which is a kind of big ship that's kind of half battleship, half cargo ship.
Sound of men cranking sales
Pete: Lots of cannons, lots of deep storage decks, and the beer was traditionally placed on the lower decks and used as ballast.
Thud of barrels on decks
Pete: Initially, that was the first reason it went to India, before people realized how great it was.
Sound of sails being raised and wooden ship creaking
Music – going on a journey
Pete: So you're on these wooden sailing ships, you come out of the English Channel, you go out through the Canaries, the Azores…
Sound of storm rolling in, then thunder
Pete: …that can be quite stormy, especially around the Bay of Biscay, depending on what time of year it is. A significant proportion of ships were kind of wrecked and their cargos would go onto the shore.
Sound of shipwreck
Music of calmer skies
Sound of mast and waves
Pete: Then when you get to the equator, you're sailing kind of south, sort of southwest.
Sound of waves and wind
Thoughtful music
Pete: Because Brazil is not as far away as it's portrayed on a lot of maps. If you sail just off south once you get past the Horn of Africa, you end up on the coast of Brazil. But when you get to the equator, and this happened to us, you get to the doldrums…
Sound of nothing going on below deck, wood creaking
Pete: …which is a common term now, but initially means the weather conditions around the equator, where the sea is flat like a mirror, and there's no wind at all. You're just a ship on a sheet of glass. And you're stationary. And people often went mad there, jumped overboard...
Sound of splash in the water
Pete: You know, you sail 24 hours a day on different watches.
Sound of water lapping boat's edge
Pete: There’d be nights when I'd be on the tiller of the ship, sort of navigating, guiding it, where you've got shooting stars all above you…
Music - sparkles
Pete: …flying fish in the water, jumping onto the deck and phosphorescence in the water behind you. So it's like you're in your own silent disco.
Music continuing journey
Pete: … And then as you're going up the west coast of Africa, you go past Madagascar, you go past the coast of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia. When you get to Somalia, you have permanent night watch stationed in case of pirates…
Music fades out
Pete: …who are real and now have speedboats and machine guns, not cutlasses and eyepatches.
Rachel: And were you just sort of hugging your barrel of beer?
Pete: Yeah, I had a big suitcase on wheels that it was in. I got to India and I had to pay $276 in bribes to get out of the port.
Rachel: So presumably when you got there you cracked open the barrel and had a taste?
Pete: Yeah, it was great. I mean, I'm biased, obviously, because I'd been waiting to taste this beer for 3 months. It was wonderful, it was mellow and it was smooth. So it kind of demonstrated that the journey had had a real effect on the taste of the beer.
Sam: Brewers would market their beers with descriptions like:
‘Pale Ale prepared for the East and West India Climate’
Sam: Over time, that was obviously shortened to something a little easier to say –
Rachel: India Pale Ale.
Sound of a pub
Megha Khanna: Would you like to order anything like a pint or…?
Rachel: I think we'll go for IPA for sure. What have you got on tap?
Megha: So we've got a couple of options. We've got the Sorcery 3.9% IPA, and we also have a live IPA, which is 5.5, or you could go for a 2.8% small beer.
Rachel: We'll go in the middle. We are working after all.
Sound of a pub
Rachel: We're in the Glad, a cozy pub not far from London's famous Borough Market.
Sam: We can't not have an IPA while doing an episode about IPA.
Rachel: That and we're here to meet someone else who is partial to a pint.
Megha: Hey, David.
David Jesudason: Hi.
Megha: You all right, David? Long time no see.
David: Yes. Yeah, you well? [fades out]
David: My name's David Jesudason. I was actually acclaimed as Beer Writer of the Year 2023, a few days ago! I'm a journalist and a British Asian author. My mum is Malaysian, and my dad is Singaporean, but he's from Indian descent. And I love beer, but primarily I love pubs and how it's served and the culture surrounding beer and those who drink it.
Rachel: Then first of all, let’s just say cheers.
Sound of pint glasses clinking & 'Cheers!'
Rachel: What, can you tell us when you taste this beer, like, what should we be looking out for in the flavor?
David: Well, I mean, what we're having now is an American style IPA. The majority of craft beers are going to be IPAs that are brewed in the American style. So they have more citrusy hops. Whereas a British IPA is always going to be more malty or bitter-like. When you have an American IPA, they are generally higher ABV, you know, percentage alcohol-wise. Whereas British IPAs are going to be more sessionable. So session is any beer that's around 4%, I'd say.
Rachel: And why is it called that?
David: So you can have a session! So you can have like four beers or, you know, you can drink it over a longer period of time than you would for another beer. It's literally on the nose.
Rachel: Ok, we're on a session today. How do today's IPAs compare in flavor to what would have been shipped off back then?
David: It wouldn't have tasted anything like an IPA that we have today.
Rachel: Oh right.
David: So beers that were shipped to India, so they completely changed their flavor profiles by the time they reached India. We perhaps would find it very unpalatable. The hop character probably would've disappeared and it would be more mellow and more like sort of champagne at the time. But the problem with that is it wasn't very luxurious for the people who were living under colonial rule at the time. Particularly because of the atrocities that were being committed by the East India Company and then later on the Raj.
Ominous music
Sounds of seagulls and shipping containers
Rachel: It's a misty morning in London. You've taken me down to the water. We're somewhere around Canary Wharf, looking out onto the slightly dirty-looking Thames. Lots of seagulls around, but apart from that, not really a person to be seen.
Sam: Yeah, we've got some shipping containers in the background being loaded up and down. So, this is the spot where the East India Company ships would've come into, loaded up with goods for Brits in India. Things like India Pale Ale, foods, furniture, whatever commodities from home they wanted. And it's also the spot where those ships would’ve eventually come back after their very long voyage, carrying lots of things from India - spices, tea, textiles. And you know, it's funny, we've got the city right behind us. So these tall skyscrapers, lots of them are large international banks, kind of a symbol of the wealth that flowed into this country due to what the British Empire brought back.
Sounds of shipping containers
Nick Robins: So I think the important thing to recognize about the East India Company is that when it was set up in 1600, England, Britain at the time, was a very marginal part of the global economy. The Indian economy was worth 10 times that of Britain. So that's 1600. But if you look at 1870, the share of global GDP has gone from just under 2% for Britain to 9%, so four times. India, however, has gone from 22% of GDP to 12%. So almost half, and obviously, India is a much bigger place, huge population. And at that time, the English economy, the British society was much poorer than South Asia. And that is really the impact of the East India Company and subsequent British imperial policy.
Rachel: Wow, so while this company was around, Britain's economy quadruples and India's is halved?
Sam: Yep, a pretty drastic movement of wealth. And this is why the tale you get at beer-tastings – it's only one tiny piece of a much bigger, more complicated story. It's not just about how the beer is made, but why.
Rachel: Yeah, like let's not talk about the elephant in the room. Why are there British people over there in the first place craving their beer so far from home?
Sam: Right!? So I spoke to Nick Robins, who we just heard. He's a historian and professor at the London School of Economics. Now, we've heard the name "the East India Company" a few times already, and it was one of the first ever multinational corporations.
Nick: So if you imagine, I suppose, a combination of Exxon and Walmart and Google, the biggest corporations in the world, all as one, with a private army, running a state. What do you think is going to happen? The consequences are not going to be pretty.
Rachel: Oh my god, that sounds terrifying.
Sam: Indeed. I was a bit confused about how this company operated, but that's because it evolved over nearly 300 years.
Nick: So, the East India Company was a shareholder-owned company. So, it was licensed by the Crown to particularly get access to the luxury goods of Asia. And its first task was to get access to the spice trade. And then textiles and garments became the core business of the company for a hundred or so years. So, it was trying to use these precious, scarce commodities, gold and silver, to buy the spices, then the textiles. Because there was simply at that stage, nothing really that England and the UK was producing, because this is before the industrial revolution, which it could really sort of trade and were useful in those continents and climates.
Sam: But after a while, things escalated…
Nick: It ceased really just being a trading company with its trading outposts in different cities, and actually used its private army to get involved in local wars, and therefore starting to take over and rule certain parts of India, largely on a sort of nominal basis, so there would still be local rulers, but the East India Company would be the power behind the throne.
Sam: That power meant they took over government functions, like raising taxes. So they're taxing Indians and then using that money to buy Indian products, which are shipped back to Britain.
Dark music
Nick: So this was, in a sense, the drain of India was reflected in the stock market boom of the East India Company after this, because actually the company shares were seen basically as a license to print money based on the tax revenues of India. So that's the first way through essentially conquest and therefore control of the tax revenues, definitely mechanisms which were in a sense consciously used so that Britain didn't pay its way in the world.
Sam: The British weren't just using economic oppression though, they used military might and violence to shut down resistance and conquer territory.
David: They had a huge, huge army. At one time, their army outsized the British army…
Pete: …and the early 19th century was kind of like Britain's version of the Wild West in India. It was plunder. It was pillage. It was people setting themselves up as very rich people and it was quite riotous and quite lawless…
Nick: …one of the things is the lives of British people in India were generally very short. It was a very dangerous place to be, largely through disease. Being part of the East India Company was a very high-risk venture, but potential for very high personal gain…
Pete: …and it invested nothing in the country. So we had famine after famine after famine, war after war after war…
Sam: Part of the story that often gets lost, is the resistance against the East India Company. First of all, some people back in Britain, were protesting.
Nick: So, because of its scandals, because of its booms and busts, because of its oppressions around the world. It was the subject of plays. It was the subject of a lot of caricatures. Weavers in London actually sort of marched on Parliament to oppose the company's practices…
Sam: Others around the world were protesting too, like soon-to-be Americans.
Nick: The Boston Tea Party, again was a protest against the East India Company and the American patriots who were protesting against this actually said, 'Fellow countrymen, look what the East India Company has done in India. We better watch out that they don't do the same here.'
Sam: And of course, in India, there was resistance too, led by figures like Tippu Sultan (known as the Tiger of Mysore).
David: His possessions were worth about 200 million pounds in today's money. And so, he was a scientist, a scholar. When he was murdered by the British. they smashed his throne up and cut up all the jewels. And when he was defeated, Lord Wellesley held up a glass and toasted to the corpse of India.
Sam: And in a weird way, this brings us back to beer. It was literally fueling an army…
Pete: Being a soldier in India was short periods of intense violence followed by long periods of doing absolutely nothing and one of the things they did to pass the time was get drunk. There was a local drink called Arak, and if you drank Arak, you probably had a life expectancy as a British soldier of about 3 months. Alcoholism and disease killed far more British soldiers than anything else did, than ever died in battle. And so, the British army knew that they had to offer an alternative that was strong in alcohol, that the troops could get drunk on, that was good enough quality to stop them drinking the Arak. And that's when IPA started being shipped in industrial quantities.
Music ends
Sam: More beer in a second, I promise. But very quickly: it's here we come to the demise of the East India Company. This chaotic situation couldn't last and under pressure from home and abroad, the British government finally steps in.
Nick: In the 1850s, you had increasing control by the British state. One, to rein in the company actually, because it was in many senses out of control in India, and was concerned about it being out of control in Britain as well. But also, so that the British state could start exercising more control of this commercial institution as it was becoming more of a sort of territorial power and not just a merchant operation. And the British Raj essentially took over in 1858.
Sam: The end of the East India Company didn't bring an end to colonial rule, far from it. The British Raj marked a period of direct rule by the British government over the Indian subcontinent. That lasted until the partition and independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. As with the East India Company, the end of the 19th century saw IPA fade away too. And this was for a few reasons. Not least of all, attitudes towards drinking…
Pete: In the later Victorian age, Britain became a very prim, proper, almost a religious fundamentalist country.
Sam: And those prim Victorians, and the missionaries who went to India, were often in favor of prohibition. Shipping routes were also shortened, when the Suez Canal opened in 1869, cutting the journey to India down from six months to a matter of weeks. So, no need for a beer with such a long shelf-life. And finally, there were some new beers on the block.
Pete: Germany and the Czech Republic developed golden pilsner lagers. And they were even better at being cold, refreshing drinks in a very hot climate.
Rachel: There is nothing better than a lager in the sun. But that clearly wasn't the end of IPA. I mean, today it seems to be absolutely everywhere. So, when did it make a comeback?
Sam: This style pops up sort of like a message in a bottle in the US, in the 1970s. While experimenting and trying to recreate the flavor of old, mellow British beers, brewers on the West Coast discovered their own hops had a very different effect.
Pete: Wow, that's punchy, that's, that's different, that's rejuvenating. And so, American brewers accidentally stumbled across a way of using their hops, which no one else wanted, to create a beer like no one else had tasted before and it became the style that sort of exploded craft beer as a movement from kind of American microbrewing to being a global multi-billion-pound business.
Rachel: It's kind of like how Fanta apparently tastes different all over the world because of the different oranges!
Sam: Yeah, something like that. Anyway, there's one place in the US where IPA had a great leap forward, thanks to some hoppy innovations. We sent reporter Melanie Brown to "Hoplandia" or "Beervana" – a.k.a. Oregon.
Sound of a hop machine & student in a field
Students chatting:
The last one smelled like pickles.
You got dill?
I got some dill.
Interesting.
Melanie Brown: This state in the Northwestern US, on the Pacific Coast, above California, boasts one of the highest densities of breweries. But I've come here to join some student hop-pickers who are currently rubbing between their palms the fluffy, sticky, and really very pungent hop cones and noting down what aromas they can smell.
Student 1: These are the ones that I thought smelled pretty good.
Melanie: What notes are you getting?
Student 1: It's like floral, like rosy. Kind of like really juicy.
Student 2: Smells good, it's really delicate.
Melanie: What's the weirdest description you've ever given something?
Student 1: Soy sauce? Probably.
Melanie: Welcome to Oregon State University’s experimental hop breeding fields, where they’ve been doing research on hops since 1893. Lead scientist Shaun Townsend offers to take me out for a little tour of the hop crop. Try saying that after a few too many.
Sound of walking in field
Melanie: So, we're standing in the middle of some fields and in front of us, it's sort of mini telegraph poles with wires linking them up in a sort of crisscross fashion, 20 feet or so above our head. And essentially, they're growing like vines, it looks like.
Shaun Townsend: Yeah, vines. So, in the spring, all of this growth starts, and then it all happens within the one growing season.
Melanie: Gosh, so they've climbed this high? 20 foot just over the summer?
Shaun: Yeah. Yeah, they'll grow up to a foot a day in the best conditions. Melanie: That sounds a bit monstrous!
Shaun: They are. What's fun this time of the year is all of the different smells.
Melanie: Sean's just handed me a bud, I guess, you would call this or what is it?
Shaun: We call it informally a cone. It's the mature female flower.
Melanie: It's a very strong smell. It's actually a very nice smell.
Shaun: Yeah, that one's unusual.
Melanie: Sort of peppery, lemony, almost like there's a bit of cannabis in there or something.
Shaun: Yeah, it's possible.
Melanie: That is, that is strong.
Shaun: Compare that to that one.
Melanie: Oh, now that's totally, that's very different. That's kind of funky and uh…
Shaun: Almost cheesy?
Melanie: That is cheesy.
Shaun: Now this is fresh, right? They've not been dried yet. And so that aroma can change as they dry. But we get the notes, as they come off of the plant.
Melanie: So we don't have to worry about a cheesy pint. But it was really notable how many of the scents I was picking up off the fresh hop flower are really very similar to the flavors you taste when drinking an IPA. So, what makes for a good IPA hop?
Shaun: So, like the standard West Coast IPA, you often see, in my mind, kind of the piney, resiny type hops that go into those. Some fruit as well, fruity notes. And if you're talking about more of the East Coast style, the hazy style, then certainly that tends to gravitate towards the more grapefruit, citrusy, guava, those kinds of fruits. So, I don't focus too much on any specific thing. I just try to bring something new to the marketplace.
Melanie: In addition to flavor, Shaun is particularly focused on making sure the new hop breeds he develops are robust enough to resist pests and diseases. That means constantly evaluating the crop all the way from seed to field, over many seasons.
Shaun: Now the process on average is about 10 years.
Melanie: So, the hops I'm looking at growing up that mini trellis, that in theory could be in someone's drink. In a decade?
Shaun: Correct.
Melanie: That's exciting, isn't it? To think that you've got the next flavors growing over there and we don't know what they are yet.
Sound of pulling down hop vines
Melanie: Shaun explains that Oregon is a hop-growing powerhouse thanks to its climate, long days, and fewer disease and insect problems than elsewhere in the country. That will change as climate change gathers pace, so Shaun is already planning for the future.
Shaun: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, the federal government is predicting that this part of the country will be warmer and drier in 30 years. So, I started looking at drought tolerance in the hops and we do that on the short trellis by simply just skipping a couple of days of water, stressing the plants, and see who does pretty well with that who doesn't. And then we can use that in a breeding scheme to try to improve on that trait. We have an eye on the future, trying to future-proof our hops as best we can.
Melanie: So whilst the world is burning around us, at least we'll be able to toast our demise with a crisp and juicy IPA. The craft brewing scene in the Pacific Northwest is thriving. Portland in particular boasts many breweries and places to enjoy said brews, so I'm off to a brewery come bar, to see the end result of these hop growing efforts.
Sound of bar, someone whistling in the background
Whitney Burnside: Hello.
Melanie: Hi!
Whitney: How are you? Nice to meet you! Thanks for coming in.
Melanie: Whitney Burnside is the co-owner and brew master of Grand Fir Brewing in Portland. She describes her IPAs as "dry", "assertive", and "unapologetically bitter". So how does she pick the right hops for the flavor she wants to create?
Whitney: We will usually just test one out. You know, maybe we'll brew a 15-barrel batch of it. That's our size of our brewhouse. And if we really like it, then we'll start to think about, did it do well in that style of beer? Would it be more suited for higher alcohol? Lower alcohol? Different style? And we'll go from there.
Melanie: How quickly can you go from sort of receiving a bag of exciting new hops or existing hops to having it in a pint glass?
Whitney: For an IPA, from brewing to getting served a glass, 17 days.
Melanie: Gosh, that's actually a lot quicker than I would have thought.
Whitney: Yeah.
Melanie: It's finally time for a taste test. I leave the giant vats of beer and go upstairs to a trendy metal and glass bar that looks over the brewing floor.
Whitney: I would love to pour you a couple of samples.
Melanie: Great, I would love to receive those.
Whitney: The first sample I'm going to pour you is our Lichen IPA. This is kind of a San Diego style West Coast IPA. So it's very, very light and drinkable.
Melanie: Smell the aroma coming off that. Mmm. So, it's very sweet smelling, in a lovely way.
Whitney: Mmm, like that ripe fruit? You get a little strawberry, you get a little of that ruby red grapefruit.
Melanie: Okay, I'm gonna try a little sip.
Whitney: Cheers.
Melanie: Cheers. Oh, that's really refreshing though. It smells sweeter than it tastes. It's very smooth. Delicious. A very gentle tang. But not overwhelming at all.
Melanie: And I'm looking at the lichen can. It looks pretty funky.
Whitney: Yes, our artist, her name is Corinne McNeely.
Melanie: Is that expected now? That your newest beer or IPA or whatever, that it comes with some sort of attractive visual element?
Whitney: Exactly, yeah, we're big on that. Painting a picture of the experience that matches the name.
Rachel: I'm so thirsty now.
Sam: Well, luckily for us, it's time for our next beer I think, Rachel.
Rachel: Yes!
Sound pulling out beer cans
Rachel: I also want to apologize at this point because I had no idea what the US had done for services to beer.
Sam: On behalf of my country, I accept your apology.
Rachel: I promise I will never make a joke about bad American beer again, but I still refuse to drink my beer out of a metal bottle.
Sam: How about a can?
Rachel: Yeah, ok.
Sound of opening a beer can
Sam: Rachel, I have a few IPAs from the U.S. here that we can sample, but more importantly, I want you to take a look at the branding and tell me what you see.
Rachel: Ah, okay. Um, so we've got some really bright colors. Ok, I said we’ve got some really bright colors and the name of the beer is… Bright Colors! We've got kind of like a tye-dye design on the front with like pinks and turquoises and blues. Next one is also bright colors but in a kind of cool, simple, graphic way. So, we've got very nice deep pink and oranges and it's called Grapefruit Crush. I like this one a lot. I'm salivating. Oh, this one's cool. Right, so we've got a bit of a cartoon going on. We've got a goat wearing underpants, he's got an electric guitar, and he's raising a saxophone above his head. We've got a motorcycle being ridden by some masked, horned thing with purple hair and a skier with really cool retro clothes.
Sam: That's a lot to pack on one can.
Rachel: There's so much going on here. I'm not sure I would go for this on the shelf, it's too much for me.
Sam: It drew me in. I mean, looking at all of these as a whole, what sorts of vibes are you getting?
Rachel: There's loads of bright colors. It's quite fun, funky, young, there's some like humor involved I'd say, it's quite funny, it's quirky.
Sam: Yes, there are some clear themes here. But in recent years marketing for some IPAs – particularly IPAs in the UK – has gone down a completely different route, recalling the era of earlier IPAs. Here, so I want you to have a look at some of these…
Rachel: Okay, so we've got one first up called Sea Tiger. Then next up, Jaipur IPA. Again, this one's pretty in your face. Imperial IPA, Old Empire IPA, Bengal Lancer. But, underneath it says, 'brewed beside the Thames'. Ooh, okay, the next one is called Maharaja IPA. Okay, this bottle, again, looks pretty old school. It's called 1839. Okay, this is like really trying to hark back to olden times.
Sam: So, these are some bottles and the labels on them and how they're marketed. But here are a couple advertising campaigns that have also run in the UK in recent years –
Rachel: So, the third poster I can see says, 'brewed in Bermondsey, South London, nowhere near India.'
Sound of the pub
David: It's almost like you're being taunted as a brown drinker by the way these products are marketed. And I think it harks back to this idea of Britain being once great, and when people think about that, they always think about empire and how Britain ruled India. Especially when you have a situation where we're a declining force on the world stage, so to hark back to an era where we weren't that, then it is very compelling for some people and some drinkers. But for me, I think that's really silly because all that we're harking back to is an era that never existed anyway. A lot of people were very poor in this country, and a lot of people were made a lot poorer in India.
Rachel: This is actually what got David writing about India Pale Ale in the first place.
David: Marketing companies aren't interested in history. They're not interested in anything apart from selling a product. The problem is when it becomes marketed as a luxurious product that ties into colonial splendor, or it does something silly and doesn't engage with its past. You have this thing of a beer company saying, 'Well, I don't want to engage in that subject because it's too problematic.'
Rachel: And what about consumers? Are we ready to talk about this colonial legacy? In that trendy craft beer bar in London, we surprised people with a pretty unexpected question while they sipped on their pints: Do you think Britain deals with its colonial past well?
Couple: Haha! No. Absolutely not.
Man 1: Not in terms of education, not in terms of what they're doing now to recognize it. No.
Man 2: As a whole the country is divided. There's a section of people who are like "Bring back the Empire!" who probably don't know the history behind and the violence that came from it.
Woman 1: It's very celebrated, which I think ignores a lot of what happened. Yeah, it makes me uncomfortable to think of the fact that Britain is very proud of it still.
Man 3: Based on history and especially what's going on lately with obviously a new king and all these things, I think they had a chance to actually change that legacy – they didn't. So yeah, I would say no.
Sam: I lived in the UK for a while and I've got to say this really shocked me. The period between the Tudors and World War I – a pretty large period of time –seems to be like a black hole for most Brits.
Rachel: I know, it really is kind of shameful. I don't remember learning anything at all about the East India Company in school. And I actually only had to do history as a subject until I was like 14, I think.
Sam: For a people so into pub quizzes, you'd think you guys would be more schooled in your own history! But Rachel, you're not the only one who missed out on this chapter…
Priyamvada Gopal: So my students come to the classroom in their third year. They're about to finish. And in general, they have a very, very minimal understanding of the British Empire in general, almost no knowledge of the East India Company, and very basic, if any, knowledge about the British Raj in India. They might have seen a few films or read a book or two, but there's very little specific knowledge on these topics. My name is Priyamvada Gopal and I'm professor of postcolonial studies at the University of Cambridge.
Sam: Priya teaches at one of the most prestigious universities in the UK, if not the world. But she's found herself having to offer a sort of remedial crash course in colonial history, just so that her students have a basic understanding of the British Empire. But Priya is a professor of literature, not history.
Priyamvada: I believe that you can't really teach literature without some historical understanding. And I also believe that literature is a participant in the writing of history, in documenting how people relate to historical events, how people relate to each other, how people think about themselves in the world.
Sam: We often get the story of empire from the point of view of the colonizer, in this case, the British, but from other European countries as well. But how do you teach this history of empire? From what vantage points do you approach it?
Priyamvada: One of the great virtues of being able to teach via literature is that it allows us multiple viewpoints. We look at texts written by, for instance, men and women who were part of the British Raj. We look at British administrators in parts of Africa and in India. We look at the point of view of the enslaved. We look also at things like caste, class, and race. And we also try not to just look at a kind of binary of colonizer/oppressor and colonized victim. We think about the nature of collaboration in the entrenching of the British Empire and who within the colonies benefited to some or a greater extent from the project of empire.
Sam: Why do you think this large era in British history gets skipped over in the UK?
Priyamvada: It requires a kind of demanding relationship with history. There was enslavement, there was indenture, there was land grabbing, there were famines, massacres. A lot of it is not very pretty and it doesn't really tally with the idea of a glorious nation that led the world towards betterment. So, I think what it would require is a dealing with difficulty. And that's something that the British educational system, not unlike other educational systems, is reluctant to do.
Sam: What are your students' reactions to learning this history of empire?
Priyamvada: The main feedback I got was a demand for more. Young people have both the energy and the capacity and the interest in dealing with toughness. Now, my students are not very young, but they are 18-20. They are very keen to grapple with toughness. They want and relish the challenge of difficulty. I think the unwillingness to deal with toughness really reflects a jaded adult mindset, an adult mindset that isn't willing to leave its comfort zone.
Sam: And, as Priya points out, this is not ancient history. Over ⅓ of the world lives in a country that once was under British rule.
Priyamvada: There is very little that is happening in the world at this exact moment that is not profoundly tied up to European empires more broadly, but also the British Empire more specifically. One of the exercises that my students really enjoy doing in dialogue with each other is thinking about how the British Empire shaped their own family histories, their own class backgrounds, their own kind of cultural identities. And then how do I, an Indian woman, turn up in the classroom teaching English literature? And then we talk about the fact that the British Empire created what it called ‘a class of interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern'. And they turned to the dominant castes in India to create the small group of English-speaking people who would be, as they put it, interpreters, 'English in every way, but blood and color'. And I talk about the fact that my ancestors were part of that project and therefore were part of the creation of a small but extremely influential Anglophone English speaking middle class in India. We often think about historical acts as very distant, but actually when we start to make the connections, we might realize that we're a lot closer to certain historical events and moments than we think we are.
Sam: Yeah, it gives us kind of a tether, a connection in a way that just learning about it in a classroom feels maybe too big or not so tangible.
Priyamvada: Yeah, or pointless, but here you can start to make connections that may give you some sense of who you are.
Music
Ishaan Puri: So my name is Ishaan Puri and I'm the founder of White Rhino Brewing Company in India. So, we're very much the Indian brewery that's slowly but surely putting India on the map, you know, by changing stereotypes pertaining to Indian beers and breweries.
Rachel: So, IPA was created long ago to satisfy a very specific demand half a world away, it was part of this violent period of colonial conquest, then it slipped into obscurity for a while before getting a modern revamp in the US. And now it's come full circle back to India?
Sam: Yeah, but with a very important difference. This time the brewer is Indian.
Ishaan: I wanted the brand to obviously have some element of India. A lot of people still associate the rhino with just Africa, but you know, we also have rhinos in India, but then I also chose the white rhino because it's a symbol of rarity and we are India's first craft brewery and you know, I wanted a name that would kind of distinguish us as something that's rare and hard to find, hence White Rhino.
Sam: Ishaan is trying to make a name for India in the global craft beer scene, but the first goal was to make beer for Indians.
Ishaan: I went to college in the U.S. And it was very much all about West Coast IPAs, really hoppy, you know, bitter IPAs. But I didn't really feel that would work in India, because you know, we've very much been a country of macro lagers. Then having kind of established my first two styles which were a wheat beer and a lager, then we said, ‘Okay, let's introduce the market to something a little more flavorful.’ And that's where we came up with our own rendition of the IPA. It wasn't a West Coast or an East Coast or the original, you know, style supposedly pioneered by the British Empire. This is effectively, you know, a style which I designed for the Indian market. Because we don't overhop the beer, some of the malt character does actually come out. But I mean, the bottom line is it's a really balanced beer. And I feel that even beer novices can appreciate it.
Sam: And when it comes to the history of IPA, Ishaan thinks it's time to move on to a new chapter.
Ishaan: I don't think anyone really cares much for the original story. I don't think that story has much mileage in India. Ultimately, people will drink what they can palate and they won't drink what they don't like. We're just trying to say that ‘Look, Indian breweries are here and we make great beer and we shouldn't be looked at as a country that just produces cheap macro lagers.’ And that's it.
Rachel: And you know one place people have had the chance to enjoy a pint of White Rhino? Back in the Glad, that little London pub where we met David.
Sound of pub
Rachel: Not content with just writing about beer, David actually had a go at brewing his own batch of IPA, too. Instead of hiding the colonial history of the beer, he printed it right on the can. And there was a message in the flavor, too.
David: …coriander, fennel, jaggery, which is sugar, amchoor, turmeric, there was mango puree, bergamot and lime zest. It even had like a hint of coconut and everything. It was a, yeah, it was a wonderful beer. It was a privilege to have that.
Rachel: Does that mean that we don't have to cancel IPA?
David: I don't believe in canceling anything. It's a wonderful product. I mean, we were talking about, like, craft beer's so popular because it's so different to what came before. In this country, we had four brewers brewing two or three different beer styles. And now we have so much choice. And I think that that's wonderful for the consumer. But I think it's time the consumer engage with these products a little bit more.
Rachel: In fact, David thinks the pub is the perfect place to start having these conversations about the past.
David: Absolutely, yeah. Beer is the drink of the people. So, it's a chance that it can teach people and give them more information and be more honest. It's our history. This is British history. We all need to know about it and to see the empire for what it was and to see how we can move forward as a nation.
Music
Rachel: Thanks for joining us for a pint (or three) and thanks to all of our interviewees for their time and expertise. This episode was produced by Sam Baker. It was edited by Charli Shield. Our team also includes Katherina Abel on fact-checking, Julia Rose in the archives, and Chris Caurla. Extra thanks this week to Shabnam Surita, and to Megha Khanna at the Gladstone Arms in London. I'm your host Rachel Stewart. If you're new here and wondering what's up with our quirky name, I recommend listening to our first episode about the game Broken Telephone. You can get in touch with us at [email protected], no apostrophe! Tell us what historical conversations you're having over a beer or just recommend your favorite brew. We'll be back in 2 weeks with something to soak up all that beer…
Music comes up
Rachel: Mmm! That's really good! I can taste the bright colors jumping out of the can.
Music fades out
[Trailer for Shadows of German Colonialism podcast]