Modern brewing began for India in the early days of the British Empire — the mid-1700s. The demand for beer in the hot Indian climate by the British administrators and the troops was so great that it led to the creation of a completely new style of beer by George Hodgson in his London brewery — India Pale Ale. IPA is a strong, highly hopped ale designed to survive the five month ocean voyage to India without spoiling. India Pale Ale was shipped with every voyage for over a century and became very popular in Britain and North America.

In the late 1820s Edward Dyer moved from England to set up the first brewery in India at Kasauli (later incorporated as Dyer Breweries in 1855) in the Himalaya near Shimla, producing Asia's first beer called Lion. The brewery was soon shifted to nearby Solan (close to the British summer capital Shimla), as there was an abundant supply of fresh springwater there. The Kasauli brewery site was converted to a distillery which Mohan Meakin Ltd. still operates. Dyer set up more breweries at Shimla, Murree, Rawalpindi and Mandalay.

Another entrepreneur, H G Meakin, moved to India and bought the old Shimla and Solan Breweries from Edward Dyer and added more at Ranikhet, Dalhousie, Chakrata, Darjeeling and Kirkee. In 1935, when Burma was separated from India, the company was restructured with its Indian assets as Dyer Meakin Breweries, a public company on the London Stock Exchange. Following independence in 1949, N.N. Mohan took over management of the company and the name was changed to Mohan Meakin. The company continues to produce beer across India to this day and Lion is still available in northern India.

Today however, no brewer in India makes India Pale Ale. All Indian beers are either lagers (5 per cent alcohol — such as Australian lager) or strong lagers (8 per cent alcohol - such as the popular MAX super strong beer). International Breweries have recently announced an intention to work with Mohan Meakin to produce and launch an India Pale Ale called Indian IPA from India's first brewery at Solan.

In various parts of north-eastern India, traditional rice beer is quite popular. Several festivals feature this nutritious, quite intoxicating, drink as part of the celebrations. The rice is fermented in vats that are sometimes buried underground. It is quite popular, and not only with humans. Elephants have been known to attack villages and raid these vats.