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HANDMADE BEER IS ROARING AHEAD

MICROBREWERIES: Once every town and every parish had its own brewery. Then their numbers dwindled and the few remaining gained a virtual monopoly. Until beer enthusiasts themselves started brewing again. In two or three years there will be around 200 microbreweries in Denmark, with 15% of the market – and some of the world’s best beer.

There is industrially brewed beer, and there is real beer: hand brewed, exclusive and in types and qualities which are turning the traditional beer market in Denmark upside down. The ordinary beer which has dominated the Danish market since Carlsberg introduced it around 150 years ago, is being challenged by a vast number of new beer types from the wealth of microbreweries bubbling up all over the country.

Denmark has been a nation of beer drinkers since the Viking age when each family brewed its own beer. Later small breweries appeared, and until 30 years ago many towns had their own local brewing house. But most of these have since fused into two large brewery groups, Carlsberg and Royal Unibrew, which until the mid-1990s had more than 90% of the market.

Alternatives
10 years ago something starting happening. While beer consumption had been steadily falling because increasing numbers of people were drinking wine and spirits, beer enthusiasts started looking around the world for alternatives to Danish beer. Beer imports increased significantly and consumers quickly realised that there was a world outside Denmark.

But the new trend of international beers changed into beers from Danish microbreweries, firstly with the establishment of a small brewery on Bornholm, an island in the Baltic Sea, and shortly after Brøckhouse, a brewery in Hillerød. The beer from Brøckhouse especially attracted great interest. A small group of beer enthusiasts successfully established an association, and beer festivals and exhibitions in local associations became a big draw for beer enthusiasts at the beginning of the new millennium. A year after launching its first beer, Brøckhouse was voted Denmark’s best brewery and its India Pale Ale was voted the year’s best beer.

That was in 2002, and at the time there was only a handful of microbreweries. They all experimented with different beers – from strong, dark stouts to Trappist beers and light, elegant pilsners. The number of microbreweries increased to 15 in 2004, more than 30 in 2005, and in 2006 a new microbrewery is being established every third week. Over the next 2-3 years, there is expected to be more than 200 microbreweries in Denmark.

Carlsberg
“Then I think we will have reached saturation point,” says Christian Skovdal Andersen of the microbrewery Ølfabrikken. “Microbreweries will have around 15% of the Danish market, and that is an amazingly high share when you consider that the price of hand brewed beer is 7-8 times higher than industrially brewed beer.”

A significant detail in the development has been that Carlsberg, Denmark’s largest brewery, has also jumped on the bandwagon and established its own microbrewery, Husbryggeriet Jacobsen. The brewery has had great succe

The losers in Denmark’s beer battle have so far been the imported speciality beers where sales are either stagnating or dropping. Growth in wine consumption in Denmark has similarly levelled out.