Cathedral of brewing: tradition remains the byword at Denmark's Carlsberg Brewery

Modern Brewery Age, July 22, 2002 by Gregg Glaser

History. Romance. Family feuds. Scientific innovation A massive art collection Domestic and international philanthropy -- The Carlsberg story has it all: Enough in fact, for a television miniseries, which is just what Danish TV producers came up with a few years ago. Denmark is the place it had to be done, because Denmark is home to one of the great breweries of the world. Certainly one of the most historic and important breweries. Carlsberg.

THE BEGINNING

The story starts in the late 1700s in Jutland, the rural western peninsula of Denmark that rises into the North Sea from Germany. It was in those years that Christian Jacobsen left his farming family and headed east to the capitol city of Copenhaqen on the island of Zealand. Jacobsen set his sights on becoming a brewer, and by 1811 he had established a brewery in a city, like most European cities of the time, that was home to many small breweries. Top-fermented wheat beers were the style of the day in Denmark, and that's what Jacobsen brewed. He was a tinkerer of sorts, interested in scientific matters, and he was among the first of the Danish brewers to utilize the thermometer in the brewhouse.

Jacobsen's son, Jacob Christian Jacobsen, born in 1811, followed his father into the brewing business. JC, as he became known later in life, also shared his fathers interest in scientific brewing matters. When JC heard of the new lager beer experiments being undertaken by German, Austrian and Czech brewers, he set off in the pursuit of higher brewing knowledge.

JC became a student of Gabriel Sedlmayr II, the famed owner and master brewer of Munich's Spaten Brewery. Sedlmayer, along with his friend and rival Anton Dreher of Vienna, were the pioneers in developing lagers in the 1840s. From The Book of Carlsberg, it's written that JC "managed to secure two pots of yeast from Brewer Sedlmayr." Two pots of the new lager yeast were indeed a fine thing for JC to obtain. But he was in Munich at the time and he wanted to brew with this yeast in Copenhagen, a not so mere 600 miles north. JC was in a tough spot How could he transport a perishable, living food product such as yeast, a product that needed to be kept constantly cool, all the way home? It was 1845. Refrigeration was still some years off in the future. The story told by Carlsberg is that JC placed the pots of yeast under his stovepipe hat during that weeks-long stagecoach ride home, cooling the pots with water from streams at every coach stop.

THE BIRTH OF DANISH LAGER

Once home, JC brewed his first batch of lager using his mother's wash tub as a fermenter and lagering vessel. In doing so he acted much like homebrewers of today, who later go on to start commercial breweries. JC's lager was a success and he next brewed a larger, professional batch that became the first commercial bottom fermented Danish lager. JC was given a royal license to lager his beer in the cellars under the Copenhagen city ramparts.

This dark brown lager was a success. Up until this time all Danish brewers, as well as most northern European brewers, continued to brew the old-style, top fermented ales and wheat beers. But the lager revolution was slowly building steam in southern Germany and in Austria and Bohemia. Well-traveled businessmen came home to Denmark and other northern European cites with glowing tales of this wonderful tasting beer that was so different from what beer drinkers were used to drinking. As always, consumer demand led the manufacturers, in this case the brewers, and lager brewing took off.

CARLSBERG IS ESTABLISHED

Soon after his first lager hit the market, JC built a larger brewery with money he received as an inheritance from his mothers estate. He bought land just outside the center of Copenhagen, past the old city gates and fortifications, in an area called Valby. There was good water in Valby and also a new railway line for bringing in supplies and shipping out beer. Just as important to a lager brewer, Valby contained the one and only hill of any size in the otherwise flat greater Copenhagen area. JC knew that he could dig cellars into this hill (called a "berg" in Danish), in which he could lager his beers. JC named the new brewery after his son, Carl, who was five years old at the time, Thus in 1847 the new brewery was named Carlsberg -- Carl's hill. The first lagers were brewed at Carlsberg on November 10, 1847, The brewery remained in use for fifty years.

JC remained an innovator and a sponsor of innovations in brewing his entire life. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Brewing Congress, along with Sedlmayr, Dreher and other leading European brewers of his day. He set up Carlsberg Laboratories in 1875 and dedicated the labs to brewing research, as well as research in Danish national scientific endeavors. These labs were enlarged and re-built in 1897 and again in 1976 when they were renamed the Carlsberg Research Center. Today the Center houses 60 laboratories and employs 150 people involved in applied and basic research.