Pete Brown, a beer biographer from the UK, has done a Dalrymple recently, recreating a similar epic journey—a bit more frothy, of the India Pale Ale.

Rewind to 18th century India. The British garrisons in the peninsula were in shambles. Their morale was down as diseases hit the teams in battalions. Above all, their pet indulgence, beer, was also not reaching them. The troops were roaming about in native parts of town and drinking illicitly distilled spirits. If an army marches on its stomach, for the British army it was on beer. The illustrious example of this passion is the D-day battle during World War II. One of the first tasks that the high command undertook after securing the beaches of Normandy in France on June 6, 1944, was to supply the troops with beer. The now-famous photographs of Spitfires with hogsheads of beer in their bomb bays stand tribute to this historic passion.

IPA was meant to meet the needs of the British garrison in India. The normal beer was great, but could not put up a fight with the sea on its way to the subcontinent. The higher gravities made it slowly ferment on its voyage through the Cape of Good Hope. Ale was till then the predominant style of beer, with lager, what we are more used to in India, only coming later.

The 18,000-mile voyage saw the IPA cross the Equator, with temperature variations of 30 degree Celsius. Brewers in England’s historic town of Burton on Trent came up with a remarkable solution. They brewed the drink with higher gravities and hops content. Hops are plants whose cones add aroma and flavour to beer; and in the case of IPA, protect it from infection. It worked. When the IPA arrived unspoilt in India, it got a frothing welcome.

Cut to 2007. I was sipping samples of Porter, Bitters and IPA at the British Beer and Pub Association stall at a trade show in Delhi. I was told another story on IPA, as bottles were eagerly uncorked.

However, Brown told me this was a famous myth on how IPA got so popular in England. Brown had just finished an amazing journey when I met him in Delhi in December 2007. I had the onerous task of squiring him around a couple of bars in Delhi. And our starting point was the one at the Delhi Gymkhana Club. Ashish Jasuja, a beer enthusiast from Mumbai, had introduced the IPA chronicler to me.

A friend, in need and indeed, managed to fly out another barrel to Rio just in time for Brown to catch his next ship, which was a container bound from Rio to Mumbai via the Cape of Good Hope. On the way, he crossed the Equator, and as he was crossing it for first time, a ceremony was held to initiate him and propitiate the deities of the sea. Brown was a polliwog—the name given to an Equator newbie—and the shellbacks (Equator veterans) put him through some rigorous hazing. All for a good cause though.

That’s IPA and Brown. The story of beer keeps frothing. Some, no doubt, biased sources have told me beer was the root cause of civilisation. Nomads settled down to start growing crops, and barley was one of the earlier crops to be grown. And happily for all, it later converted to beer. At a press conference in Kolkata in past December, we became the first people for over a hundred years to drink IPA in India, as Brown opened up a magnum of IPA he had brought. The beer had lasted the journey well, and at 8% alcohol by volume, it made my head spin after a few sips, taking me back to the cantonment towns of the Raj. Who knows how history may have turned out if IPA hadn’t been discovered? The British may have left India voluntarily before 1947, rather than forgo fresh beer.