Other Burton brewers, including Bass and Salt quickly followed Allsopp's lead. ġ9th century poster for Phipps, an IPA brewer in Northampton.Īt the behest of the East India Company, Allsopp's brewery developed a strongly-hopped pale ale in the style of Hodgson's for export to India. During the same period, several Burton breweries lost their export market in Europe, Scandinavia and Russia when the Napoleonic blockade was imposed, and Burton brewers were seeking a new export market for their beer. The brewery came into the control of Hodgson's son early in the next century, but his business practices alienated customers. Ships exported this beer to India, among them his October beer, which benefited exceptionally from conditions of the voyage and was apparently highly regarded among its consumers in India. Its beers became popular among East India Company traders' provisions in the late 18th century for being two miles up the Lea from the East India Docks, and Hodgson's liberal credit line of 18 months. Īmong the first brewers known to export beer to India was George Hodgson's Bow Brewery, on the Middlesex- Essex boundary. One such variety of beer was October beer, a pale well-hopped brew popular among the landed gentry, who brewed it domestically once brewed it was intended to cellar two years. By the mid-18th century, pale ale was mostly brewed with coke-fired malt, which produced less smoking and roasting of barley in the malting process, and hence produced a paler beer. The pale ales of the early 18th century were lightly hopped and quite different from today's pale ales. See also: Bow, London and Burton-on-Trent