Drane were now ready for a coup. They would cut out the East Indiamen’s officers and ship their beer to India themselves, retailing it themselves once it arrived, and thus gathering all the profit of the Indian beer trade. Naturally, the East Indiaman captains and officers were furious: Hodgson’s beer had previously “formed one of the principle articles in their investments,” as one commentator wrote. Hodgson and Drane also deeply upset the merchants in Calcutta and Madras, who found they too were now cut out from the most important brand in the local beer trade. The Bombay Grab brewery tap on Bow Road
It proved popular – especially amongst the East India Company officers, ‘civil servants’ and the civilian middle classes – and in January 1801 the Calcutta Gazette carried an advertisement for the arrival of “beer from Hodgson… just landed and now exposed for sale for ready money only.” The Bow Brewery’s reputation was established in India, its name now a guarantee of quality: in 1809 it was being described in the Gazette as “Hodgson’s select Pale Ale, warranted of superior excellence.” By 1811 George Hodgson’s son Mark was running the brewery. Within a couple of years, in 1813, some 4,000 barrels of Hodgson’s beer a year were being shipped to the East, four times the amount shipped in 1801. Four years later the operation had moved 230 yards east, to Bow Bridge, where a brewery tap was opened called the Bombay Grab: the name almost certainly comes from a three-masted armed cruiser operated by the Bombay Marine, the East India Company’s navy. In 1821, the brewery – by then under the management of Frederick Hodgson and Thomas Drane – was rebuilt. Hodgson and 18
It was an ill-judged move. Powerful men in the shipping business were determined Hodgson and Drane should not be allowed to wreck a trading arrangement that had help Allsopp’s started brewing IPA with the benefit of Burton make their ships’ Upon Trent water officers wealthy. Early in 1822 Campbell Marjoriebanks, who represented the shipping interest on the East India Company’s court of directors, persuaded Burton upon Trent brewer Samuel Allsopp to replicate “Hodgson’s India beer”, which was paler and more bitter than the ales the Burton brewers were used to brewing. And by an extra stroke of luck, it was discovered that the well water of Burton, rich in calcium sulphate, naturally produces a much better pale, bitter ale than London water, rich in calcium carbonate, which is more suited to dark beers such as porter. Until London brewers learned how to treat, or