In the 18th and 19th centuries, British brewers had learned the benefits of extra hopping when shipping beer to the Empire’s faraway territories, including India. Hops contain compounds that help prevent spoilage, and ocean journeys were long. Shipments increased, taste for hops grew, and essentially what emerged among the various beer styles was a pale ale made for the East.

The adoption of India Pale Ale as a descriptive name with its own style guidelines took longer, and it’s worth noting that English-style IPA differs from what’s evolved in America. Stateside we’ve celebrated hop intensity, whereas English brewers historically weave in more pronounced malt character and use subtlety with hop aroma and flavor.

Today, IPA has a fairly broad interpretation. But at its core, IPA shines the spotlight on unique aromas and flavors only hops can accomplish.

Hops are cone-shaped flowers whose leaves (called bracts) protect a jackpot of tiny yellow lupulin glands housed within the cone. These glands hold the resins and oils responsible for hop flavor, aroma, and bitterness in beer. Brewers can manipulate all of those things when making IPAs—using more or less hops, boiling them in the kettle, steeping them in cold fermentation tanks, and so on. There are dozens of hop varieties, and each has a unique flavor and aroma character, much like wine grapes.