In fact, when the Sharmas pour rupees at tastings and festivals, they hear this assumption spoken out loud. “It happens all the time,” says Sumit Sharma. “People come in and say, ‘I can’t wait to try your IPA.’”
Perhaps drinkers can be forgiven for jumping to conclusions. IPA, short for India Pale Ale, has long been the dominant craft beer style in the United States, accounting for 46% of dollar sales in the craft segment, according to Chicago-based market research firm IRI. and wheats tied for second with just 10 percent each. Chances are, if you wait in line for a craft beer anywhere in this country, it will be a strong, hoppy IPA.
So imagine twice the confusion when Rupee customers sip the Sharmas’ flagship beer and enjoy a much lighter, less potent lager.
They shouldn’t be shocked. By and large, beer drinkers in India are not opting for IPAs; they drink lagers. The country’s most popular national beer is Kingfisher, a European-style pale lager in the vein of Budweiser or Heineken, which are also among India’s best-selling brands overall. The Sharmas deliberately decided to brew a smoother, smoother craft lager, with imported basmati rice instead of the usual barley, to complement the powerful flavors of traditional Indian dishes on their parents’ restaurant menus.
In contrast, Indian lager has virtually nothing to do with the culture and tastes of its namesake: it was a British colonial export intended for troops stationed in the jewel of their South Asian empire. For that matter, the IPAs that have recently taken over the New World – both the bitter, hoppy West Coast versions that sparked the craft beer revolution and the hazier, juicier New England style that rose to power – have nothing to do with those original beers that the British shipped to the subcontinent.
This misunderstanding was not lost on the Sharmas – and it also represented an opportunity. In November, to commemorate Diwali, the brothers launched Rupee’s first Indian lager, designed to taste more like the original English ales shipped to the colonies. The move was partly a response to market demands and the development of the Rupee brand and portfolio. But as third-culture kids with ties to both India (where their parents are from) and England (where Van was born), running a brewery in the United States , the Sharmas also understand that they are in a unique position to reclaim this part of their culture. .
“We put the story on the can, making sure we present the beer in an impactful way,” says Van Sharma. “We’re telling the world, ‘It’s a rupee,’ while helping to educate people about the history of the British Empire.”
Beer in its current state is a European innovation. The Sumerians are believed to have invented brewing 10,000 years ago, and there is evidence that the practice spread independently across ancient civilizations from China to the southwest United States, but lagers , the beers, porters and stouts we drink today are derived from established styles around the world. Europe – and they came to most of us via colonization.
The problem facing the British in the early 1700s was how to get their beer in drinking condition to their distant settlers. Brewers knew the beer would become sour in barrels during the four-month ocean voyage through tropical and equatorial heat en route to Asia. They also realized that spoilage could be mitigated by increasing the amount of alcohol and hops, the bittering agent that also acts as a preservative. But that boost alone wasn’t enough to give birth to a hoppy lager; Most of the beer shipped east was stout, the libation of the British working class and soldiers. “Over time, the beers exported to India have evolved,” says food and drink writer Ruvani de Silva. “The recipes have been refined into something lighter and better suited to the heat.”
Yet there was not a specific type of beer bound for Bombay or Calcutta. British beer historian and author Martyn Cornell claims that various beers made by several brewers were generally called “pale ale for India” or “pale ale prepared for the climate of the East and West of India”. India “. It was not until around 1835 that an advertisement for East London’s Bow Brewery, “East India Pale Ale”, appeared in the archives, indicating that the taste for this type of beer had returned to Britain ( it never sold well in civil India). .
The love affair was lukewarm and relatively short-lived. English IPAs never eclipsed the popularity of other bitter beers, like sweet beers and the classic English bitter, which was essentially a more affordable version of the IPA. By the time World War I imposed a government cap on brewing and increased taxes on beer in proportion to its alcohol content, the stronger, more expensive IPA that the British had come to know, but had disappeared .
Those three letters didn’t return to vernacular beer prominence until the early 1980s in Washington’s Yakima Valley, where homebrewer and craft beer pioneer Bert Grant was on the verge of to launch a revolution with its locally (over)hopped beer. “It was the model for a boom in very hoppy beers,” says Cornell. “Grant called it an IPA. No one who knew better was there to correct him.
When the Sharmas commissioned brewmaster and consultant Alan Pugsley of Pugsley Brewing Projects International to create their Rupee IPA, he drew on his personal experience at the famous Ringwood Brewery in the county of Hampshire in southern England , in the early 1980s. “Because of my English heritage and their heritage, I decided to create a traditional English IPA,” he says. “It’s a lost style, like many classics, in the United States”
They call the result an Anglo-Indian IPA, a beer that is not extremely bitter or strong (just 5.6 percent alcohol by volume; many American IPAs check in at 7 percent and above). Hops are more present in the aroma, which results in a pleasant, balanced sweetness and smooth finish that, like all Rupee beers, is designed to pair well with spicy vindaloo and chana masala.
On the back of the can, available in four-packs at various national chains, including Total Wine, as well as independent stores and Indian restaurants in 14 states along the East Coast, the Sharma brothers tell the true story of the style, concluding by the proclamation that “Rupee puts India back into India Pale Ale!” They acknowledge that it’s a bold claim in a country where some drinkers may not know what “IPA” means.
“There’s a bit of a disconnect in thinking about IPA as being British and American,” says de Silva, who is of South Asian descent. “It’s not necessarily a pleasant connection with the subcontinent. Colonize, strip the land of its assets, terrorize and massacre the population. When we look at the history of the IPA, it has a double-edged meaning. Rupee tries to tell this story while incorporating Indian cultural history.
In many ways, Rupee’s mere existence constitutes a stance against the Western brewing establishment. According to an audit by the Brewers Association, which represents craft breweries in the United States, only 2% of craft breweries are owned by people of Asian descent. The rupee is not only a presence that infuses Indian culture into American beer, it is also a beacon for South Asian emigrants who want to recognize themselves in the products they consume.
“They represent our values,” says Ankit Desai, owner of Uncorked Wine & Spirits, which operates six stores in the Washington, D.C., area and sells Rupee. “South Asians own a lot of wine and beer stores. I am Indian. I come from this culture. A large portion of our clientele is South Asian. We promote brands we feel connected to.
So far, the promotion appears to have paid off. Less than a month after Rupee released its IPA, Sumit reported that the company had already sold out of its pre-orders. The instant popularity pushed the Sharmas to make the style they expected to be a seasonal Diwali version a year-round flagship alongside their original lager. And the brothers say the place they’ve seen the most noise is at Indian restaurants.
“Our on-site suppliers say their Caucasian customers are asking for IPA,” says Sumit. “This product filled a void.”
