History of Carlsberg

Carlsberg beer was first brewed in 1847, when Jacob Christian Jacobsen established a new brewery outside Copenhagen. J.C. Jacobsen, is often referred to as “a man of his time”.

He was born in Copenhagen in 1811. As soon as J.C. finished his schooling, he became a brewing apprentice to his father and learnt his craft from the bottom up. When his father died, he became an independent brewer at the age of 23.

His love and passion for beer instilled him to learn and acquire different techniques in the brewing processes. At the beginning of the 1800s, Copenhageners preferred top-fermented “white” beer, but J.C. Jacobsen regarded bottom fermented Bavarian lager beer as a more refined product and decided to focus on that.

He had first tasted this beer in a wine shop in Copenhagen, and after making a stage-coach journey in 1845 to the Zum Spaten brewery in Munich to obtain yeast, he was ready to start up his own production. In 1847 he started Denmark’s first lager beer brewery, Carlsberg. The brewery named after Jacobsen's son, Carl, and a variant of the Danish word (bjerg) for mountain.

J.C Jacobsen set up the Carlsberg Laboratory in 1875. This laboratory soon wrote itself into the annals of industrial history as one of the most groundbreaking research establishments of all time.

In 1876, J. C. Jacobsen set up The Danish Carlsberg Foundation, one of the world's earliest scientific foundations. In the same year, he left his company to the Carlsberg Foundation, which supports basic research within natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. Today, the Carlsberg Foundation is both an institution and the actual owner of the breweries.

In 1970, Carlsberg merged with another famous Danish brewery, Tuborg, to create the Carlsberg Group, which sells over 79 million hector litres (hl) of beer and 21 million hl of soft drinks worldwide each year.

Currently, the Carlsberg Group is one of the world's leading brewing groups, powered by more than 140 brands, which span core beer brands including Carlsberg and Tuborg and strong local power brands, such as Ringnes in Norway, Lvivske in Ukraine and Wusu in China, as well as authentic craft, speciality and alcohol-free brews.
History of Carlsberg