While the India Pale Ale wasn’t born in California, it was reinvented in the Golden State. From Anchor Brewing to New Albion Brewing Co. to Sierra Nevada, the first generation of modern craft brewers found a niche adapting the strong, hoppy British pale ales into a streamlined vehicle for delivering the essence of New World hops. Brewers simplified the malt bills, experimented with diverse hops varieties, and created new processes and equipment for imbuing brews with hops character. These bright, bitter, and aromatic ales sparked an infatuation with hops that emanated across the craft-beer landscape and developed into the modern IPA style.
Understated Malt, New Hops
The rise of the IPA (an offshoot of the American pale ale style) to craft-beer prominence began forty years ago. In 1975, Anchor Brewing was struggling against the tide of American Light Lager and determined to keep their novel brewing techniques and unique ales flowing. They had introduced Anchor Porter in 1973 and wanted to follow that beer up with an American take on a British pale ale to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Paul Revere’s Ride. “We learned about the Cascade hops variety from a hops-grower friend,” says Anchor’s veteran Brewmaster Mark Carpenter. “It was a new hops at the time, and no one was really using it as an aroma hops.”
Anchor’s iconoclastic owner, Fritz Maytag, paired that pungent new hops variety with dry-hopping techniques he adapted from those learned during a research trip to England—Carpenter says that at the time, Anchor was the only American brewery to dry hop their ales. The distinctive Cascade character was underlined with an understated malt flavor, and Liberty Ale would unexpectedly become a template for the first modern craft beers. But it wasn’t an instant success.