If you’re knee-deep in a new project, there’s nothing quite as exciting as getting beyond the ‘standard’ sources and finding a little gem of information that you’ve not seen before. In my pursuit of all things lager I’ve dug into most of the sources that I’ve got closest to me – generally in Danish and about Carlsberg.

The newly arrived 50th anniversary book

Most Carlsberg information stops at around 1906 with the joining of the two Carlsberg breweries and starts again in 1970 with the adding of Tuborg to the company. As I’m not so interested in Carlsberg as a company but more in how it broke into the British and other international markets, this can be a bit frustrating because a lot of good stuff lies between these dates.

However, just arrived is the two-volume edition of the 50th anniversary of the Carlsberg Foundation from 1926 and I can already see that there’s a lot of great information that I’ve not come across before.

So far, I’ve just dipped into the foreword and discovered that in 1906, the newly co-operating Carlsberg breweries (the father’s and the son’s) decided to rationalise their portfolio so there was just one type of each beer. And to focus sales on Pilsner – now there’s a fateful decision.