The Great Dane

How
did that happen? Carlsberg is currently the fifth-largest
brewing group in the world, and Carlsberg beer is sold in
154 countries. They are the brewers that put brewing on a
true scientific basis, and who continue to contribute to
brewing science on a high level. The rest of the world knows
Carlsberg as readily as it knows Heineken. Why is it that
Americans are largely unfamiliar with the beer?

“Carlsberg is by
far the largest brand in the world that has such a small
presence in the US,” admitted Mike Mitaro, president of
Carlsberg USA, the import arm of the brewery. “In various
forms and ways, Carlsberg has been in the US since the
195Os, but it was never really marketed
properly.”

It hasn’t helped
that Carlsberg’s import history is a bit ragged as the brand
was passed around. Anheuser-Busch picked it up in the 198Os,
a marriage that just didn’t work out. “A-B is a great
company,” Mitaro was quick to point out, “but expectations
weren’t met.” Those who have followed the business for a
while may remember those days, when the brand went through
an awkward image change.

After that, the
brand was picked up by Labatt USA, a relationship that
turned uncomfortable when the importer’s Canadian parent
brewery was bought by InBev (then Interbrew), a global
competitor of Carlsberg. This was just not going to work,
and after a certain amount of groundwork and deal-making,
Carlsberg went solo on May 1, 2OO4, with the creation of
Carlsberg USA.

But that’s only
the US history of the brand. The history of the brewery is
much richer and makes for a great selling point. It’s tied
right in with the history of the little country where
Carlsberg lives, and makes an essential contribution – one
of the most important known – to brewing science and
history.

Carslberg was
founded in 1847, during a time when Denmark was coming to
terms with radical changes in national outlook and options.
Denmark’s host of small islands (the country lies on 4O5
islands, many uninhabited) was a natural home for the Viking
hordes that ravaged coastal Europe, raiders who ranged from
Newfoundland to Constantinople, terrorizing shore-bound
populations with their quick, violent attacks to kill,
capture and sack. Denmark’s early history is one of conquest
and dominance.

That all fell
apart in a little over 2OO years. Danish armies fell under
the power of Swedish arms (it feels as odd to type that as
it does to read it, believe me) in the 16OOs. They lost more
power in the Napoleonic wars of the early 18OOs, partly
thanks to the near-total destruction of their navy at the
hands of Admiral Nelson, and lost the provinces of
Schleswig-Holstein (a name that shows up occasionally in
pretentious humor) to the Germans in the 186Os.

Denmark was
faced with a tininess and loss of importance that was no
less shocking for having occurred over 2OO years. Once the
giant of Scandinavia, Denmark was now some island-based
farms by the Baltic and a good port, Copenhagen. The Danes
responded by recognizing their new situation, and developed
a new national motto: “outward losses must be compensated by
inward gains.” The wave of industrialization this brought on
lifted the Carlsberg brewery into existence.

The brewery was
founded by Jacob Christian Jacobsen (note the spelling; the
“-sen” ending is a sure-fire clue to Danish ancestry, like
Hans Christian Andersen). Jacobsen’s father was also a
brewer, and JC, as he became known, was fascinated by
advances in brewing science. Eventually this fascination led
to his apprenticeship under one of the true greats of
brewing, Gabriel Sedlmayer II, owner/brewer of the Spaten
Brewery in Munich.

Sedlmayer was
creating the body of knowledge that would become the
precepts of lager brewing. Among these were the paramount
importance of the yeast, an idea that Sedlmayer grasped
intuitively. When JC had learned what he could, he left for
home with a valuable gift from Sedlmayer: lager
yeast.

Yeast, of
course, was every bit as much a living, vulnerable thing
then as it is now. JC knew he had to keep it alive through
6OO miles of coach travel, north to Copenhagen. The
Carlsberg legend is that he kept the yeast covered by his
tall hat all through the weeks-long journey, cooling the hat
and the yeast with water from roadside streams.

A story like
that might make today’s yeast microbiologists shudder, but
JC evidently got away with it. He brewed a successful test
batch as soon as he got home (company legend has it that he
used his mother’s washtub), then scaled it up at his
father’s brewery. He soon built a new brewery in Valby, just
outside of Copenhagen, where a lone hill peaks up out of the
flat countryside. JC dug lagering cellars into the hill,
built the brewery on top, and named it Carlsberg, Danish for
“Carl’s Hill”, after his five-year-old son, Carl. The year
was 1847.

JC built his
brewery on the solid success of his lager beer, but he never
lost his desire to experiment and learn. He founded the
Carlsberg Laboratories to further brewing science –
laboratories that would also support wide-ranging scientific
research in the future. It was here that in 1883 the
discovery was made that would, more than any other except
perhaps that of the thermometer, make brewing a science more
than an art.

Emil Hansen, a
Carlsberg Laboratories scientist, isolated the first
single-cell brewing yeast strain, a pure strain without any
other yeasts, a strain that would make consistently clean
and pure lager beer. Hansen named the strain Saccharomyces
carlsbergensis. It was the father of modern yeast strains.
More important than the strain itself, though, was the
technique that Hansen developed, a painstaking approach to
singling out identical yeast strains. It is the reason
Carlsberg beers maintain their distinctive flavor and
cleanness to this day.

JC’s dedication
to the sciences was matched by Carl’s dedication to the
arts, and Carl made sure the brewery would contribute to
both; an example of “outward losses must be compensated by
inward gains” in action. He founded the Carlsberg
Foundation, a philanthropic organization that supports both
arts and science. It also makes the brewery practically
immune to takeover in the consolidation-happy European beer
market: the Foundation owns 51% of the company.

“They are a
hunter, not the hunted,” Mitaro confirmed. “They cannot be
eaten up because they are owned by the Foundation. Under CEO
Nils Andersen, their main focus has been building and
acquiring breweries in eastern Europe and Asia.”

Carlsberg is
indeed in expansion mode, according to European business
sources. It has snapped up Hamburg’s Holsten brewery (and
four other German regionals) and has interests in Poland’s
Okocim brewery and Norway’s Ringnes brewery – Carlsberg also
owns former Danish rival Tuborg. The brewery is developing a
relationship with Scottish & Newcastle through a joint
venture in a technical services company in the UK. It’s a
complicated world in the brewing industry, but Carlsberg is
proving to be an adept player, after a somewhat slow and
unsure start.

“Carlsberg does
business in 154 companies,” he emphasized, “a truly global
beer. Their company slogan is ‘Drink with a world of
friends’, and it’s true. Anyone who’s traveled outside the
US has had Carlsberg. They’ve seen the ads, they’ve had the
beer, they’ve seen the soccer or golf sponsorships, or the
sponsorship of the World Cup in skiing.”

That’s a focus
that has served Carlsberg well in their global market, and
it’s how Carlsberg USA plans to proceed here in America.
“Carlsberg is putting a significant investment behind the
brand in the US,” Mitaro said. “We are advertising on ESPN,
and are distributed in almost all 5O states.”

Tim Burke, at
Burke Distributing, backed up the sports focus of
Carlsberg’s marketing in the US. “They are definitely making
an effort in the market,” he said. “They have ads on ESPN,
and are heavily going after the Irish soccer bars. They’re
trying to build a base from there to work
forward.”

Burke also owned
up to one of the things that hurt Carlsberg, just as it hurt
Lowenbrau: the brand had been brewed under license in
Canada. “It was made in Canada under license for quite a
while,” he said. “But it’s the Danish stuff now, and it’s
excellent. It’s probably one of my favorites in the
house.”

What is
Carlsberg like? “It’s not highly bitter,” said Burke. “More
like a Stella, more sweet than it is bitter. It doesn’t give
you that pilsner bite. It’s an easier tasting beer, easier
on the palate.”

“Carlsberg is a
lager beer,” Mitaro said emphatically, when asked what made
his beer different from other European imports. “It’s
primary difference is the yeast it is brewed with. The
founder of Carlsberg developed this yeast strain: all lager
beers use yeast that comes from that strain. It’s drinkable,
but has a good European taste. We encourage people to
compare it to any other beer and make their own
decision.”

Burke sees that
working in the targeted Irish bars. “It sells best in the
Irish bars,” he said. “It’s traditionally a European beer,
so any bar with an international flavor will do well with
it.”

Draft is the
primary focus for Carlsberg USA at this point, but they are
following draft success closely with bottles. How do you
translate that to off-premise sales? “Emphasize the
quality,” Burke said. “It’s a great beer. And the history of
the brand is deep. This brand has so much culture behind it:
51% of the brewery is owned by the trust, and that money
goes straight back to the arts and sciences. That’s
something no other brewery I can think of does.”

Mitaro
encourages store owners to give the brand a little room to
breathe. “Display the product in the front of the store!” he
said. “Make it available and visible. If it’s hard to find,
you might miss a high-profit sale. It is one of the
largest-selling, most widely distributed brands in the
world. People have seen it if they’ve traveled.

“The Northeast
is our largest market,” said Mitaro, “strongest in New York.
But we’re growing rapidly in Boston and in the Southeast.
The West Coast has some strong markets. It follows the
pattern of other European beers: the large cosmopolitan
cities are where we sell the most beer.”

Apparently the
time for outward losses compensated by inward gains is over,
and its time to look outward again. The most promising thing
about Carlsberg’s move into the US is that they’re serious,
as proven by the creation of Carlsberg USA. They’re a big
enough company – more than big enough – to put a real push
behind it. They’re no Vikings anymore, but a solidly-based
company with a good future.

“Carlsberg is
growing very nicely in the US,” said Mitaro. “They’re in it
for the long-term, they’re looking for long-term profitable
growth. They’re serious about it, and that’s why we’re doing
it ourselves.”