Probably The Best Beer In The World

Good morning. This week we are continuing the Euro tour, writing to you from Germany. However, the focus of the newsletter will be based around our time in Copenhagen, Denmark which found it's way near the top of our list of favorite cities. We fully embraced the concept of “hygge” and had beers in many cozy spots.

-Brandon Copeland

“Probably The Best Beer In The World”

This past week I toured the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen, Denmark, the brewery that produces the pilsner that is self proclaimed “Probably the best beer in the world” and was thrilled with the quality of the exhibit. We did a self guided tour followed by a beer tasting of their craft beer label Jacobsen, and learned all about the history of the brewery while walking through an exhibit with original equipment still in place. While I tend to prefer smaller craft breweries who are pushing the bounds of brewing and taking on the big players in the space, it is also interesting to marvel at the history and scale of the incumbents.

The brewery was started by J.C. Jacobsen, who named the brewery after his son Carl. He raised his son to take over the brewery, and his whole life was committed to beer making. Carl Jacobsen traveled all over Europe to learn how others brew beer and to get ideas for how to make better beer at Carlsberg. He went to Bavaria to learn about lagers and brought the lager back to Denmark (personally carrying lager yeast on a 22 day journey back to Denmark) where it quickly replaced ales as the most popular style of beer, and continues to be to this day.

The brewery started with just 10 employees, who lived at the brewery and over the past two centuries has turned into a worldwide organization with 30,000 employees. The scale is immense, with breweries operating in over 30 different countries around the world.

I found the experience inspiring, but also antiquated. It’s amazing they were able to push the bounds of brewing science to be able to replicate the same results on lagers every time to have consistent quality, which was a huge issue in the late 1800’s. However, now that we know more about brewing science and have equipment and ingredients readily available, consistent quality isn’t the only mark of success - flavor, creativity, and variety is the modern take on beer. I think there is still a solid place for the classic easy drinking lagers for many years to come, but I lean toward small scale production where agility and innovation are at the forefront.

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Beer Trivia Question

🍺 What did Copenhagen native Niels Bohr receive from Carlsberg Brewery after winning the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics?

Read to the end to find out if you're right!

Brewgr Recipe of the Week

Carlsberg Elephant

We love a theme here at Brewgr, and couldn’t miss out on an opportunity to include a Carlsberg clone as our recipe of the week. Carlsberg Elephant is a pretty good take on a clone lager, however if I were to brew this recipe I would likely drop the fermentables a little to lower the ABV. My efficiency is generally lower than 80% on my all-in-one brewing system, so that alone may drop the ABV down. The yeast is right on point, using a WLP Copenhagen Lager yeast.

Credit: BeerNutHomebrew

Poll Results: Is Homebrewing More of an Art or a Science?

The Carlsberg family would definitely have voted science for this poll, but for us homebrewers, brewing is usually a combination of art and science. We don’t generally have the perfect equipment, and we aren’t necessarily aiming for the same results every time. Creativity in recipe design and pushing the limits of beer styles is deeply rooted in the homebrewing identity, so it would be remiss to say that homebrewing is only a science, but at the same time if you don’t follow the science, your art experiment will turn out tasting funky.

And the Answer Is...

🍺 Carlsberg Brewing gave Niels Bohr a mansion right next door to the brewery with an unlimited lifetime supply of beer. Why did they offer this to the Copenhagen native? Carlsberg was big on science and formed an internal laboratory to further the understanding of brewing sciences that is still operational to this day (Carlsberg Research Laboratory).