The mark of a premium beer has always been its taste and it is for taste of their beers that brewers around the world routinely visit the Carlsberg laboratory in Copenhagen, in an attempt to learn the principles which for over a century have put Carlsberg at the forefront of the brewing industry.

Walking around the Carlsberg Brewery you can't help but wonder at the astute decisions that were made so many years ago by the pioneers of the Carlsberg empire and which even today guide the day to day running of the firm. It should be enough to stand under the gates leading to the brewery to realise that this is not just another beer factory. For a start, the entrance is no ordinary iron fence with perhaps a guard house to deter unwelcome strangers. Rather it is a widely acclaimed work of art by sculptor H.P. Pedersen-Dan, commissioned in 1901 by Carl Jacobsen, son and heir of the founder of Carlsberg. Made entirely from granite, the work represents four lifesize elephants, each with the name of one of Carl's four children carved into its flank.

The brewery's chimney with its convoluted shape and its base decorated with exact replicas of the chimers from Notra Dame Cathedral is indicative of the history that surrounds Carlsberg. Stroll through the buildings and the usual gray and concrete which one might expect of a modern factory are replaced by delicate reliefs and bronze statues of the type more often associated with museums than breweries. And in fact Carlsberg does have its own museum where the history of Danish brewing in general and the Jacobsen family in particular are on permanent display. This project, too, was the work of Carl Jacobsen who in 1888 took over from his father, Jacob Christian Jacobsen, himself a man of considerable vision, insight and commitment.

J.C. Jacobsen made his first beer in his mother's wash copper back in the 1880's after having studied beer brewing in Bavaria and Munich. J.C.'s firm conviction was that the taste of a beer was only as good as the yeast used in its fermentation and so he travelled 600 miles by stagecoach from Copenhagen to Munich to secure an especially pure strand of yeast from the renowned brewmaster Gabriel Sedlmayr. Jacobsen used it to produce Denmark's first bottle-fermented beers.

At a time when beer was fermented in large vats Jacobsen took the revolutionary step of fermenting his beers in their bottles and with the same zeal that led him to Dedlmayr he used money left to him by his mother to open his first brewery on a hill just outside the town of Copenhagen.

On November 10, 1842, the first beer under the Carlsberg label was brewed and Jacob Christian Jacobsen's foresight began to pay dividends. With friends such as Pasteur and Sedlmayr to encourage him, Jacobsen set up the Carlsberg Laboratory in 1875 to study the entire brewing process. Within a few short years the laboratory had made a significant breakthrough. Emil Hansen, a young scientist, isolated the first single-cell yeast culture from which eventually would come the realisation that not all yeast strains produce the same quality beer. This knowledge led to the further isolating of individual strains according to their fermenting qualities and the elimination of those unsuitable to the brewery's needs for producing only premium beers.

Spurred on by his relish of science, Jacobsen quickly established his Carlsberg laboratory as a leader in scientific studies, drawing notable scientists from all over the world to its modern facilities. It was here that the idea of developing a breeding program for yeast was first muted, and here too that significant achievements in protein research were made by distinguished scientists of the calibre of Professor S.P.L. Sorensen.

This tradition of constant development in the beer brewing process has never been forsaken and one of the most recent breakthroughs made at the laboratory has been the technique for fermenting and storing beer in the same tanks. Until now this part of the process was very space consuming and added significantly to the overall costs of beer production. This new technique allows Carlsberg to streamline its manufacturing by rationalising its employment requirements while still maintaining its competitive pricing structure. It is this very type of ongoing application to the work its founder instigated which gives Carlsberg a competitive edge envied by even larger breweries with much greater turnover and market share.

One year after establishing the Carlsberg Laboratory, J.C. Jacobsen set up the Carlsberg Foundation whose three principle objectives remain inherent in the functioning of the firm today: to sponsor the scientific research carried out by the Carlsberg Laboratory: to award funds to deserving groups and individuals in the disciplines of the Arts and Sciences; and to administer the operations of the Danish Museum of Historical Relics of Frederiksberg Castle, the restoration of which was pioneered by Jacobsen last century.

"The Foundation distinguishes Carlsberg from other businesses of the world", says Paul-Ove Kuhnel, Vice-President of Carlsberg. "The Foundation owns 51% of the company shares and this protects it from takeover, however the Foundation itself is not owned by anyone, it is owned by itself if you like. What is notable about it is that the money made from its dividends goes back into society by way of grants to artists and scientists for example. This continues the notion of our founder that the firm should give something back to Danish society from the money generated by the sale of its beers. Although there is no-one from the Jacobsen family in the Foundation today, the scientists who make up the greater number of its members are in the best position to administer the granting of funds and awards, besides which of course they also run the Foundation".

It was this same spirit of enterprise and endeavour which was to see the Carlsberg name become synonymous with beer making of a standard of excellence other brewers would come to both respect and imitate.

Today, as in the past, other brewers routinely visit the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen in an attempt to learn the principles that for over a century have put Carlsberg at the forefront of the brewing industry. Mr. Hans Henrik Dahl, the Brewmaster at Carlsberg is justly proud of the attention paid to their yeast by other breweries around the world, some of them many times larger than Carlsberg.

"The yeast used in the brewing of the beers makes all the difference", says Mr. Dahl. "Here at Carlsberg we use the yeast our founder J.C. Jacobsen discovered in studies at the Carlsberg laboratory last century. It is this one primary ingredient which gives our beers a particular characteristic of taste and flavour. Different breweries use different yeasts and of course this leads to the varied tastes in beer that exist around the world. All Carlsberg breweries use this one yeast strain grown for our personal use in the Carlsberg laboratory from a single cell strain kept in the laboratory for that purpose.
"Our 'quality assurance' people responsible for propagating the strain and they travel the world ensuring that the same procedures are carried out wherever we have a brewery or have licensed someone to brew our beer. In this way the famous Carlsberg taste and quality is assured no matter where the beer is brewed because you don't get the variations in product composition that can otherwise affect the beer".

Carlsberg's reputation for being at the forefront of beer brewing in the world is in no small part thanks to its efforts in the area of quality control. A walk through the brewing plant reveals even to the casual observer an obvious concern with cleanliness and efficiency.

Says Mr. Dahl, "We are very particular about the cleanliness of the equipment we use, our tanks in particular. Any trace of the bacteria anywhere along the process can contaminate and destroy the beer you are producing. Bacteria will affect the beer fermentation and ultimately the taste and body of your beer. Unless we are absolutely stringent with the degree of cleanliness we insist upon, we cannot guarantee that the end result will be a beer that Carlsberg would be proud to put its name on".

This philosophy is applied to all Carsberg Breweries in almost 30 countries around the world, with regular inspections carried out to ensure that the optimum level of production hygiene is adhered to. In the remaining countries where Carlsberg beer is distributed, and there are over 140, the controls on product shipment and distribution are just as tightly monitored to reduce the possibility of any flaw with the quality due to spoilage from inappropriate storage or variations in climate.

Although the brewing process itself is complicated to the uninitiated, there is an immediate sense that every step in the process is guided by exacting standards of the kind other breweries are eager to adopt. For Vice-President, Mr. Kuhnel, one of the things that sets Carlsberg apart and is the envy of other breweries is the attention Carlsberg have always given to their raw materials.

"There is no point in using low or poor quality malt in your brewing", he says pointedly. "You can buy cheap barley and produce the subsequently cheap malt, or you can buy cheap malt itself. Either way you do not get the premium beer you might desire. For a start the colour will be hazy rather than vivid, the body will be inconsistent and the beer as a whole will lack character and flavour. At Carlsberg we elect to spend more money on buying high quality barley and so on, increasing the likelihood that we will produce a beer of a remarkably high standard, which as Mr. Dahl has said we would be proud to put the Carlsberg name to".

"Since it is our commitment to be the very best in terms of quality, we invest heavily in new technology", Paul-Ove continues. "At the moment for instance our scientists are working on ways to shorten the brewing process without affecting the quality of the end product. The aim of the firm is to always be at least 25% better than our competitors and this becomes particularly important with the EEC. Pricing will be a major factor in our dealings with our European competitors and what we need to do now is maintain our current pricing structure while at the same time reducing our production costs".

"It takes from four to six weeks to make one bottle of beer from the time we are at work in the brew house to the bottling", says Mr. Dahl, picking up on the point that brewing is time consuming and costly. "The stronger the brew, the longer the brewing time. Because we brew 16 different types of beers and they vary in strength from the very light to the very dark, even the fermentation time will vary from between seven to nine days. On top of this you then have storage period ranging from a few days to four weeks, so you have to be efficient and cost-effective.

"We could do what a lot of breweries do and produce beer very quickly using enzymes and other agents which shorten the processing time, but then you wouldn't have Carsberg beer", adds Mr. Kuhnel. "For us the final quality is worth the wait".

Carlsberg has one of the most modern bottling systems in the world with a capacity for processing 78,000 bottles an hour. This aspect of its operations is indicative of the progressive position adopted by the firm in introducing a computer system which is so sophisticated it can be programmed for each individual week of the year to control the different stages of production of the various types of beers, from the addition of yeast to the final bottling.

In the end, however, it is the beer which counts and Mr. Khunel believes that while Carlsberg beer is of the highest quality, beer in general is for immediate consumption and unlike wine most beer does not improve with bottle age. This is due mainly to the oxidation of the beers which in turn leads invariably to a loss of the very taste and flavour he and his team at Carlsberg aim for.

"The good thing about beer", Mr. Kuhnel reflects, "is that it can be enjoyed with food or on its own. And now with the introduction of more and more sweet and light beers the consumer can match individual beers with the particular foods they enjoy".