There is a popular myth, one that I have been guilty of repeating on occasion, that IPA came to be as a result of necessity in order for the beer to survive the “long” (four month) sea voyage to India. This turns out to be flat out wrong. Many styles of beer were shipped to India, including porter and even “small beer” which contained low levels of alcohol and hops. English brewers had been trading their beer around the world for some time and were well aware of various methods to preserve it for long journeys and in all climates. It is likely that it was just a matter of the ship captain’s preference for doing business with Hodgson’s and Hodgson’s particular version of pale ale, which was paler and more bitter than most popular pale ales of the day, that led to the popularity of that taste in the Indian market.