This coming weekend, as Bengalureans ring out the old year and ring in the new, thousands of sweating pitchers of this metropolis’ favourite tipple will be joyfully quaffed by its citizenry. While sophisticated palates will debate the merits of a Coffee & Chocolate Stout versus a Basmati Blonde, others will lean on the crisp, comforting predictability of the world-famous local lager. Regardless, each will be participating in a century-old city tradition.
Beer is no stranger to India – the Vedas mention a beer-like drink called sura, and tribal societies have brewed, for millennia, some form of rice beer. European-style beer, however, came to India only in the 18th century, imported from England to wet the grateful throats of East India Company (EIC) employees wilting in a tropical climate most unsuitable for brewing it.
It was the Bow Brewery, in London’s East End, that first cornered the Indian market in the 1780s. Its shrewd proprietor, George Hodgson, leveraged his small brewery’s proximity to the EIC docks, apart from extending a generous line of credit to the EIC’s ship captains. Hodgson’s brewery was famous for a dark, working-class beer called porter, but his fortunes really turned when he added a lighter beer – October beer – to his offerings. The six-month-long, sea-tossed journey to a warmer clime worked on October beer in ways no one had anticipated – by the time it reached Indian shores, it had matured into a drink that EIC officers took to with relish. That was the genesis of the beer we know today as IPA – India Pale Ale.
Hodgson’s son (as sons will) changed the Bow Brewery’s business practices when he took over, cutting off credit to the EIC. It didn’t go down well – the EIC turned to Allsopp’s brewery in Burton-on-Trent, a beer-brewing region that was suffering from the Napoleonic blockades of the European markets, for a customised version of October beer. Perhaps it was the water of the river Trent that made the difference, or the fact that it was more ‘hoppy’ and had a higher alcohol content, but by 1821, Allsopp’s IPA had become the toast of the EIC’s top brass in India.
Around 1830, the first Indian brewery came up in Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh.Set up by – hold your breath – Edward Abraham Dyer, the father of the infamous Colonel Dyer, ‘the butcher of Jallianwala Bagh’, it produced Asia’s first beer brand, Lion, still in production and the signature beer of Sri Lanka today. (Fun fact: Dyer Breweries, incorporated in 1885, has been Mohan Meakin Breweries since 1967.) By 1882, there were 12 breweries in British India, including two in south India.
In 1915, Scotsman Thomas Leishman combined five south Indian breweries – the Castle Brewery (founded 1857), Nilgiri Breweries (1857), Bangalore Brewing Company (1885), British Brewing Corp (1903) and BBB Brewery Company Ltd (1913) – to form United Breweries (now UB). Draught bullocks pulled hogsheads of freshly-brewed lager (now you know why it’s called draught beer!) to pubs that had naturally sprung up around the brewery, in the erstwhile British cantonment.
In 1946, a 22-year-old whiz-kid from Karnataka called Vittal Mallya began buying up UB stock. The very next year, he became UB’s first Indian director, and soon after, its chairman. In 1950, UB came home for good to Bengaluru.
Today, one of the city’s best-known micro-breweries offers a ragi-based ale they call ‘Namma Beeru’ – our beer. The state’s Kuruba community may have some beef with that. To them, Namma Beeru would probably bring to mind their beloved deity, Lord Beereshwara, to whom a temple stands right by the Mallya Hospital on the Vittal Mallya Road, a stone’s throw away from where the city’s most famous brewery once stood.
(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bangalore)
