Pints of hops and glory
PETE Brown's could be the face that launched a thousand sips, each a different version of the legendary India Pale Ale.
All this week he's been in local micro breweries helping them make IPAs inspired by his new book, Hops and Glory, which traces the story of the drink which helped us to rule India.
"On bottles of IPA they always put a picture of a tall ship which took six months to get the beer to India. It was supposed to undergo a marvellous transformation but I always wondered 'How do you know?'" he says.
There was only one way to find out. Make the same trip.
"It became an obsession as soon as I thought of it," he says.
As he will tell beer buffs tonight at the Devonshire Cat on Wellington Street, 140 years after the last barrels headed for the Raj, he made the same trip.
He got a pal to brew him a 20 pint barrel of IPA and took it on an 18,000 mile journey by canal from Burton to Rugby, train to London, P&O cruise ship to Tenerife, tall ship to Brazil, where he caught a container ship to Mumbai then across India by train via Delhi to Calcutta.
We're in the Hillsborough Hotel on Langsett Road when a customer, who admired Barnsley-born Pete's first book called Man Walks Into Pub, wants to buy him a drink.
In that book he lists 1,000 words in the English language to describe getting p****d, almost all of which he needed in Tenerife when the barrel exploded.
"I was catching the tall ship the next day. It was my fault, I left the barrel in a south facing room with the blinds up."
There was only one thing to do after mopping up. Cheat. He and the empty barrel sailed to Brazil to meet up with a friend who had to smuggle a replacement into the country in a race against time.
Pete, aged 40, who was brought up in Mapplewell and learned to drink at the Talbot pub, was on a serious quest.
As he points out, no one has the original recipe so it's a case of conjecture and guesswork but he knew it was well hopped and strong (7 per cent ABV) to survive the journey. And what did the heat do to it?
"IPA saved the British, who had a life expectancy of three years. There was the doubtful water or Arak, a spirit made from fermented palm juice. IPA was a powerful symbol of British supremacy," he says.
He's been helping the pub's Crown brewer Stuart Ross make its own, as yet, unnamed IPA. We take a sip of it as wort before the alcohol is formed. It is very hoppy and sweet. And that's the last anyone will taste of it until at least Christmas.
As the book - subtitled One man's search for the beer that built the British Empire - reveals, the trip was a success.
He found the beer had undergone a Madeira-like transformation.
"In India, they know only Kingfisher. When I tapped the barrel one journalist refused to believe it was beer because it was complex. He said it was wine and stormed off.
"But he came back later and said could he have another glass, please!"
Hops and Glory is published by Macmillan at 14.99 or available from Pete tonight. Evening starts at 8pm. Entry 1, defrayable against book or drink.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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