Carlsberg Brewery and Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark
Date Visited: June 5, 2017
Time Spent: 2 fuzzy hours, but I could have drunk more
Collection: Beer, Industrial Machinery, Historic Buildings
Website: http://www.visitcarlsberg.com/
What's better than visiting a museum? Drinking at a museum! This is the second brewery/museum I have visited, and it did NOT disappoint. Sometimes you think all brewery tours can end up being the same after a while, but I'm happy to report that they never get old, and you always learn something new. Essentially, I'm giving you carte blanche to go visit every brewery you can and get your drink on in the name of education.
Carlsberg advertises their brewery and museum as an "ExBEERience" and I couldn't agree more. Apart from loving puns, the promise of beer at the end always gets me hooked. For all you heavy day drinkers, there's a free shuttle from the centre of Copenhagen to make sure you can enjoy all the alcohol you wish while traveling safe #Don'tDrinkandDrive.
If you don't know how the beverage we owe our very civilization to is made, you're about to get educated. The minute you walk in, you're brought into a small exhibit on the history of the Carlsberg brand, and the ingredients used to brew my preferred version of bubbly.
Probably my favourite part of the exhibit was the bottle collection. There are over 22,000 bottles of unopened beer from around the world in the collection and Carlsberg holds the Guinness World Record for it! Many are Carlsberg, obviously, but you can see some real fun ones from really random countries.
Damn you, expiry dates!!
The main exhibit space gives you a complete history of beer, from the earliest of times, and then focussing more on the history and development of beer through the eyes of Carlsberg. Of course it's propaganda, but every brewery thinks they're the best, and after two or three beers at the brewery, you drink the Kool-Aid and begin to agree. Carlsberg's social media game is on point too, which doesn't help the situation. Free wifi and themed hashtags throughout gets one waaaay too excited about posting.
The rest of the tour brings you through the actual brewery itself. You can see all the old machines, laboratory rooms, old work barracks and lockers, and the stables ( that still have horses in them!!). It's a beautiful location and the old industrial buildings are very fun to explore. There are even mannequin men which made me giggle.
Lunch break with this cutie
Now comes the fun part- the beer! They've been teasing you this whole time with stories and history and by now you're so parched you could drink a lake. With your entrance fee, you get a free beer and a souvenir- the souvenir, we later found out could be traded for another beer! We obviously took option number two. There are three different places to get your drink on: Inside the gift shop, outside from a small stall, or in a proper bar above, which has more options and special brews and food if you got snacky on your adventure.
What a day for a cold one
I turned into a beer snob here and went for the craft option, and was very glad I did cause they have a further small exhibit area where you can smell all the different ingredients that can be included in beer. You can get your smell on, and then go get you drank on and pretend to be the professional sommelier that you so deserve to be.
Clearly the beer is the star of this museum, so there aren't my 5 top artefacts/ pieces. I also unfortunately didn't try 5 different beers (but I would have). Just go and try them all- just don't miss the last shuttle back to the city or you have a long walk ahead of you.
