Monday, 12 July 2021

Canadian IPA

Have you spotted my current theme yet? Obviously, it's Canada. Only joking. IPA. 

For purely selfish reasons. I need to assemble a talk on the history of IPA and was a bit sketchy about the history in some periods. I won't claim to be 100% certain about the early years. With no brewing records from before the 1830s and no chemical analyses to work with, it's mostly inference and guesswork. Not how I usually work. Which is why I mostly limit myself to 1800 onwards.

A slight digression there. Away from the topic of this post: Canadian IPA in the late 19th century. I'd forgotten that I had these. It was only when I started going through my analyses of IPAs that I spotted them. That's the problem with having so much information. You can't remember all of it.

What strikes me is the similarity to domestic UK IPA. (Only because I was looking at those yesterday could I remember.). The Canadian versions average out a little stronger, by 3º in gravity and 0.34% ABV. While the rate of attenuation was a little lower, but still very high. 

Still, a striking similarity between the two sets, despite being brewed 50 years apart.

Not done with IPA, yet. Oh no, not by a long way.

Canadian IPA
Year Brewer Town Beer OG FG ABV App. Atten-uation
1897 Copland Brewing Toronto IPA 1059.8 1012.4 6.18 79.26%
1897 Copland Brewing Toronto IPA 1058.7 1007 6.78 88.07%
1897 Dawes & Co. Lachine, P.Q. IPA 1057.3 1002.1 7.27 96.34%
1897 Eaton Bros. Owen Sound IPA 1055.4 1006 6.47 89.17%
1897 Geo Sleeman Guelph, Ont. IPA 1051.8 1006.8 5.88 86.87%
1897 J. McCarthy, Son Prescott, Ontario IPA 1061.3 1009.5 6.78 84.50%
1897 Labatt London, Ontario IPA 1049.8 1014 4.64 71.89%
1897 S. Jones St. John, N.B. IPA 1056.4 1007.8 6.36 86.17%
1897 W. Dow & Co. Montreal IPA 1066.4 1008 7.67 87.95%
  Average     1057.4 1008.2 6.45 85.58%
Source:
"Report, returns and statistics of the inland revenues of the Dominion of Canada", By Canada. Dept. of Inland Revenue, 1898, pages 34-49

4 comments:

Daniel Boisvert said...

Of course, a chain of blog entries regarding brewing in Canada would also be nice!

ts said...

I assume you will get to it eventually, but I was wondering the percentage of US and european hops used.

Ron Pattinson said...

Daniel,

I've posted quite a bit about Canada in the past:

https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/search/label/Canada

Ron Pattinson said...

ts,

I've no idea, I'm afraid. I guess also some locally-grown hops.