In part 1 of the IPA special we break down what an IPA is and some popuilar varieties.

 

IPA Special

SPEAKERS

Connor Brekke, Dylan Schafer

 

Connor Brekke  00:09

Hello, everyone and welcome back to The Ombibulous, a show where we discuss a variety of topics regarding alcohol. From specific beer styles, distillation, the brewing process, wine, spirits, and even a history of certain liquor laws, there's a fascinating world to explore. On today's episode, we kick off part one of our IPA special where we discuss various types of IPAs. Joining me today is Dylan Schafer, owner of Dialectic Brewing Company here in Mandan, North Dakota. I'm your host, Connor Brekke. Let's all raise a glass to The Ombibulous.

 

Connor Brekke  00:50

Alright, everybody, we are back with a special episode for you today. I'm joined again with Mr. Dylan Schafer, and today we are going to kick off a special series, that is our IPA series today. We're going to run down kind of a history of the IPA and some modern, new styles that are kind of widely available everywhere. 

 

Dylan Schafer  01:14

And I think an IPA is a good one to cover too, because it is really ubiquitous with the craft beer world today. I mean, it kind of started gaining popularity and honestly, probably in the 1990s around the states and has really held true is a mainstay style for a lot of breweries, a lot of craft breweries. The style does date back a lot farther than that. So the IPA for those who don't know, is the India Pale Ale. And it gets its name from right around the late 1700s, around 1780. All those who were British individuals in India, were looking for one of their paler beers. So they were exporting... they were successfully exporting beer to India at the time. And a lot of those beers were your porters your darker maltier beers. And they were looking for something lighter, crisper, more refreshing to import to the hot India weather. And their solution to doing that was basically taking a British, a classic British Pale Ale and cranking the hops up on it and cranking the alcohol up on it a little bit. So it wasn't necessarily that much more alcoholic than some of the other beers they were exporting. Just the alcohol act as a natural preservative and a lot of the styles they exported. But hops being a natural preservative were another good way to kind of make sure that beer can make this six month voyage all the way over to India. 

 

Dylan Schafer  02:47

So that was kind of the start of the style. Again, it was originally a British style of beer. So anytime you see on the market today, if you see like an English pale ale or sorry, an English IPA, that's going to be a little bit more close to what you would have seen on a traditional IPA. So again, that was kind of... came into practice in the late 1700s and really gained popularity in the 1800s. The style kind of fell by the wayside for quite a while. And then as the United States craft beer market kind of started picking up, which was really kind of the late 1970s is when American craft beer started become a thing again. And so that's where we saw the IPA kind of gain a resurgence in the United States at the time in Great Britain, they weren't really brewing IPAs at all, It had fallen by the wayside. And new American craft brewers wanted to kind of bring back some of those traditional styles, the IPA being one of those. 

 

Dylan Sc