"Ironic is the fact that the more interested I get in beer, the less I drink of it. In my younger days I drank a lot, but was not ready to learn about good and great beer."
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In Copenhagen from September 12 to September 14 2008 
There is less than 5 months to European Beer Festival in Copenhagen and the preparations are up and running. The festival will recide in the old Carlsberg production facitly in Valby (western part of Copenhagen).
At this website you will on a regular basis be able to follow the progress. As of now you can already find information about transportation, ticket prices and more general info.
My initial reaction: "You must be joking right?". A Carlsberg that is $400 a bottle. The beer is the new Carlsberg Vintage No. 1, and according the Calsberg it is probably the world's best and most expensive.
They are charging about $400 for a single bottle of less than a pint, 37,5 centilitre to be more exact. Brewmaster Jens Eiken says that there is only 600 bottles made and most og them will be sold through three of Copenhagen's most exclusive restaurants (Noma and Prémisse).
Jens Eiken said the beer, which weighs in at about 10,5% alcohol by volume, and is stored in Swedish French oak casks in a special place about 50 feet below Carlsberg's old brewery. I have been to the special place 50 feet below Calsberg - you would not believe the treasures stored down there. Now this new one seems to join the collection.
Tha plan is that consumers won't be returning the empties for a deposit as it is custom here in Denmark. Each bottle has a hand-stencilled label by a well-known artist. The empties are said to be worth about $100 each. Despite the hype, the beer seems to be less popular than anticipated. According to Børsen not a single one have been purchased at the restaurants.
With the missing sale at the restaurants in mind, I could conclude that we have missed our aim. I am sorry that we haven't been able to sell any, but we are not giving up. If we only can target the trend setters and celebrities in these restaurants, we will be able to alter the existing attitude towards beer.
It is hard to tell the difference between Tuborg and Carlsberg. The company structure lets people believe that there is no difference between the two. Having done a blind test serving 60 'wrong' beers. 30 Carlsberg served as Turborg and vice versa, I'm pretty confident that the difference in taste is also small. Despite the fact that Carlsberg is being sold in twice as many countries, Tuborg is now beating Carlsberg in amount of sold beers.
It's especially Russia that make the statistics look this way, as Tuborg has a more young and hip image in this region.
Lower taxes combined with better distribution has increased the beer consumption in India with 90 per cent since 2002. According to the local news agency, PTI, it is primarely in Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab that the increase has become apparent.
Danish Carlsberg have entered a joint venture to build a new brewery in Rajasthan. They will start brewing in 2008.
Despite the increase, India is not at place with big consumption of beer. In fact quite the opposite. On average, people in India consume less than one litre beer a year.
Having just visited Carlsberg, i must admit that there was some surprises for me. The first surprise was that we were served really interesting beer.
We were shown around by Jens Eiken who is the brew master at Jacobsen Brewhouse. The group quickly found their way down in the cellars of Carlsberg. Here we tasted vintage beer. The first one was a vintage Påskebryg from 1964 that was quite yummy. It has a lot of the qualities of a god port wine. Surprisingly enough there was a fizzy sound when the bottle was opened. Small frothy white head that mostly diminished. Some strange stuff around the opening of the bottle. The aroma was light bread and nutty notes with a hint of caramel. Still very malty overall impression with just a hint of alcohol.
The cellars are in fact an entire underground city below the area where we find Carlsberg today. You can reach the entire Carlsberg facilities under grund.
The tasting later on included a couple of Black Label beers that were very interesting and good. Black Label means that they are somewhat experimental and therefore almost impossible to get hold of. Kudo to the brewers and developers at Jacobsen Brewhouse.
The black label both challenged and surprised me and that in it self was well worth the visit. The fact that it was Jens Eiken showing us around was also a great positive. Having a guide that both knows the how and why, with the guts to tell it like he sees it, was quite refreshing.
Off topic note: Still all the Carlsberg websites are totally crap - 100% flash and they take over your browser and makes new windows and re-sizes them. Stupid web developers (or is it the marketing guys?)!
The Carlsberg brand takes the 47th position on the top list of the top European brands with it's €6,6 milliard.
Other interesting placements:
10 InBev (Belgium)
12 SAB Miller (Great Britain)
14 Heineken (Holland)
47 Carlsberg (Denmark)
The Carlsberg is the strongest and the most valuable brand in Denmark. This is reflected in the report from The European Brand Institute. But Carlsberg is way down the list compared to other breweries.
Carsberg have recently expanded their marketing efforts to include clothing, and they are planning a television station with the football they sponsor already.
In comparison Nanobryg is worth approximately €0,00000001 milliard, but have more interesting beer. Ironic isn't it?
Read The European Brand Institute Report
The great Carlsberg with Menthos experiment. Ever tried it? Well here is what happens when you combine Carlsberg and Menthos.
Just as surprising reactions as the Menthos and diet coke reaction. Maby just a tad bit harder hitting conclusion :-)
Danish beer enthusiasts have been working on a plan to host a big pan European beer festival in Copenhagen 2008 in connection woth thier own 10th birthday.
It is cummoung! None other than Carlsberg came to the aid. Carlsberg i closing production of beer in their old facility in Copenhagen (Valby). A rental lease has been made and European Beer Festival 2008 is going to be held at Carlsbergs.
Importtant to note is the fact that Carlsberg will NOT have any influence of the content of the European Beer Festival 2008. We leave all that up to ale.dk and they probably do as fine a job as havde they many years now.
The festival will have a unique combination of new and old, of innovation and tradition. I an so exited to go there. Will I see you there?
European Beer Festival, September 2008
at Carlsberg in Copenhagen (Valby)
In response to Knut Alert's Beer Blog: Tougher times ahead for Danish micros.
The shops have been expanding the selection of beers during the last couple of years, but now the selection is shrinking again. This only leaves space in the shops for beer that can be sold quickly. Well it is obvious that the shops will stock beer they can actually sell. This fact leaves a great deal of pressure on the small breweries. Now we see some of the prices are dropping long before the small breweries even break even.
Meanwhile Carlsberg is adding to the pressure by introducing new beers and brands such as Kongens Bryghus, Semper Ardens og their new micro brewery Jacobsen. These new beers and brands makes people come back to good old Carlsberg.
Since the start of The Danish Beer Enthusiasts ale.dk small craft breweries have emerged all over Denmark. Unfortunately the market for special beer has become saturated, not unlike the IT bubble that burst around 2000 with countless companies trying to get your attention and money.
According to dot-com theory, an internet company's survival depended on expanding its customer base as rapidly as possible, even if it produced large annual losses. The phrase "Get large or get lost" was the wisdom of the day. At the height of the boom, it was possible for a promising dot-com to make an initial public offering of its stock and raise a great amount of money even though it had never made a profit. In such a situation, a company's lifespan was measured by its burn rate; that is, the rate at which a non-profitable company lacking a viable business model runs through its capital.
There is so many small breweries and although the market has expanded by approximately seven percent, there are too many now. The curve follows the dot-com in the sense that we have seen a lot of hype and a whole lot of new small companies followed by some consolidation of the market and the death of the breweries with the least successful distribution. This summer will probably be the final breath for some small Danish breweries.
Back then in the good old IT days, I talked about first provers taking over the scene from the first movers. Yes – we will see small Danish breweries go bankrupt, but new ones will immerge to take their place. The marketplace dictates who lives and dies.
Some will survive and be a success because they make great beer, while other will survive on marketing and economic skills alone.
May the good beers stay with us.
Scientists from Aarhus University is working in making Danish beer even more Danish.
Beer is experiencing a renaissance in Denmark and there a lot of new breweries has been created. Even though the beer has been produced in Denmark, the hops have been imported over the last century. In other words does Danish beer not have a unique Danish hop flavour.says Senior Advisor Gitte Kjeldsen from The Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at University of Aarhus (DJF).
© Nanobryg
