Ambitiously courageous, born to brew

Jacob Christian Jacobsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1811.

As a boy, J.C. watched attentively as his father persistently and inventively sought to brew better beer.

As soon as J.C. finished his schooling, he became a brewing apprentice to his father and learnt his craft from the bottom up. 

In 1835, when J.C.'s father died, J.C. inherited his brewery located in Brolæggerstræde in inner Copenhagen. With this, J.C. became an independent brewer in his early twenties.

At the beginning of the 1800s, Copenhageners preferred top-fermented “white” beer, but J.C. Jacobsen regarded bottom-fermented Bavarian lager beer as a more refined product and decided to focus on that.

He had first tasted this beer in a wine shop in Copenhagen, and after making a stagecoach journey in 1845 to the Zum Spaten brewery in Munich to obtain yeast, he was ready to start up his own production.

It was a success. People loved it, and he himself was quite satisfied. But he wanted to make the beer even better and was short on capacity. He only had a small cellar and was unable to keep up with the growing demand.

Two years later, he therefore opened a much larger brewery on Valby Hill outside Copenhagen. With that, Carlsberg is born.

J.C. Jacobsen was married to Laura Jacobsen (born Holst) from 1834 to his death in 1887.