Carlsberg

J. C. Jacobsen finished his first brew at Valby in Copenhagen on 10 November 1847 and named the brewery after his son Carl and the hill it stood on. He founded the Carlsberg Laboratory in 1875. There, in 1883, Emil Christian Hansen showed that wild yeast caused the “beer sickness” that spoiled brews, isolated a single good yeast cell and grew it into a pure culture, which Carlsberg first used on a production scale in November 1883; the yeast was named Saccharomyces carlsbergensis. The same laboratory introduced the pH scale. The Carlsberg Foundation has been the majority owner since Jacobsen died in 1887. In 1970 Carlsberg merged with Tuborg, the Hellerup brewery of 1873 whose Grøn Tuborg, from 1880, was Denmark’s first pilsner; Danish brewing is now concentrated at Fredericia.