Carlsberg Brewery-Copenhagen

[treehugger]

Has anyone ever been there and taken the tour? Is it easy to get to from the train station? I was in Copenhagen for 2 days last year and have seen most of the highlights. Plus I figure that I will have had my fill of churches and castles by the end of this cruise. Thanks!

[swdke]

Here is some information I found about the Carlsberg Brewery:

 

Brewery Visitors Email address: visitors@carlsberg.com

 

The Carlsberg Visitor's Center consists of the first Carlsberg Breweries from 1847, the stables, and a range of exhibitions explaining the history of the brewery which includes a display of the beer production past and present. After the visit there will be an opportunity to taste a Carlsberg product.

 

OBS! Carlsberg's Visitors Centre which opened its gates in June 1999 at Gamle Carlsberg, the old part of the Carlsberg brewery is now closed for renovation during 5 months in order to offer our guests a more modern and exiting experience.

 

It will be possible to visit our stables which holds our 12 Jutland horses, with subsequent tasting of our products throughout the five-month period (Tuesday-Sunday 10 am to 4 pm (latest admittance 3.30 pm), but the permanent exhibition will be closed.

 

We are looking forward to welcoming our guests to a modernised and exciting Visitors Centre, which will offer not only a modernised exhibition, but also a great firsthand impression of brewing and bottling in the new house brewery Jacobsen.

 

Thank you in advance for your patience during the renovations and we look forward to presenting the new Visitors Centre on 1 June 2005.

 

I posted an inquiry myself on the Virtualtourist forum board and here are the replies I received:

 

First Reply

Since the new centre isn't open I can't tell you about that. It used to be more of a museum dedicated to the history of Carlsberg. The stables used to be quite fashinating. Huge horses, the biggest I've ever seen. Back then you could also sample the goods afterwards - officially only half a pint (which is just wrong!), but usually the barmen would be quite generess if they liked you. A Malawian friend of mine would go there every sunday after catholic mass and drink for long periods (the barmen liked him).

 

Second Reply

There is not really a tour anymore. it's just a visitor center, where you get a little booklet and do a self guided tour. down at the end of the visitor center, there is a pub, where you can can have 2 drinks for free at the bar. there is usually a good atmosphere with lot's of tourists enjoying the free beer.

 

Third Reply

So to sum it up, you can sprint through the place to the bar in 55 seconds or spend an hour studying old beer bottles.

 

You can get there from a train station, or take a bus. Use the email I provided for the correct station and directions. If I recall, it's the 1st train station after the main station going south, but ask to verify.

[treehugger]

Thanks for the info! We will be there June 3rd, so maybe it will be reopened by then!

[celem]

Has anyone ever been there and taken the tour? Is it easy to get to from the train station? I was in Copenhagen for 2 days last year and have seen most of the highlights. Plus I figure that I will have had my fill of churches and castles by the end of this cruise. Thanks!

 

Everybody's tastes and interests vary, but for what it is worth here are my journal entry for Copenhagen during our Scandinavian & Baltic cruise on the Celebrity Constellation in July, 2004. Bear in mind that by the time we got to Copenhagen we were tired of visiting churches and shopping. The bus number is noted:

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July 13, 2004, Copenhagen, Denmark

$1 = 6.107 DKK

- We were scheduled to arrive at 9:30AM but during breakfast, at 9AM, the loudspeaker announced that due to technical difficulties with the propulsion systems (now repaired), our arrival would be delayed until 11AM. To compensate the ship will depart later on the next day, at 4PM instead of 2PM. I suspect that the problem occurred around 3AM last night as the ship was vibrating so much at that time that the rattling water carafe woke us up. We talked about it at breakfast with Quintos, our first waiter, and he says that it is still broken and they are probably flying some French engineers to fix the thruster.

 

- Around 11:30 we caught the ship's free shuttle to "Kongens Nytorv", which is the Northern tip of the pedestrian shopping streets, collectively referred to as Strøget. WE walked down into the subway station at "Kongens Nytorv" to see if we could take it to the central train station, but discovered that the Copenhagen subway is in its infancy and there is only a short route constructed.

- From "Kongens Nytorv" we walked to the Train Station "Hovedbanegården", which is behind Tivoli. We purchased round-trip tickets for Roskilde, which is about 30km West of Copenhagen. Our goal was Vikingeskibsmuseet, the Viking Ship museum. Rick Steves rated this as a three star tour, even higher than the Viking Ship museum in Oslo, which was a two star. It was very interesting with everything printed in multiple languages including English. I never realized how tightly Ireland was integrated with Viking Denmark, but this museum made the point. Several of the five ships in the museum were built in Ireland. The museum is also building a reproduction of the long ship and will launch it in September and in 2007 will "reconcour Ireland".They also had people in period dress at work with period tools making barrels, arrows, etc., much like at Williamsburg, VA.

- We ended up walking back to the train station as the #307 bus was going to be over 20 minutes in arriving. We passed the beautiful old Roskilde church but it had just closed for the day.

- After arriving at Copenhagen Central train Station at 6:30PM, we immediately went to eat dinner at a restaurant near the station and Tivoli that was recommended by Rick Steves, the Bryggeriet Apollo, which is also a micro-brewery. My wife had rump of lamb (Lammeculotte) and I had Plaice, a flat "Danish Plaice" fish (Ovnbagt rødspætte) that tastes more like lobster than fish. Wonderful! The food was the most enjoyable that we have had on the entire cruise. Not fancy, just good.

- After dinner, My wife wanted to go to Tivoli because she said that she couldn't come to Copenhagen and leave without having been to the famous Tivoli. I didn't really want to go since Tivoli is basically an amusement park, much like a Six Flags with some band music and more flowers, but smaller. Its primary claim to fame is its location - within a major city center, and its longevity, dating back to 1843. It was as I expected - basically an amusement park with extra music and flowers. Even if we had wanted to ride one of the roller coasters, the wait in line would have been at least an hour. It is very popular with some people and Rick Steves rates it very high, but then he tends to highly rate most “kid friendly” destinations. Oh well, tastes differ, but in my opinion, it was a waste of $10 each.

- After Leaving Tivoli, we were so tired that we took a cab back to the ship for 77Kr ($12.61).

- My wife wanted to go to the stores at the dock to find a flag pin. Afterwards we walked to the back of the ship to take a photo and noticed a "Free Bike" stand, so we inserted the returnable coin and took turns riding it. This was the only place that we have found the bikes - all other racks were empty.

- Inside our room at 10PM - very tired!!

 

July 14, 2004, Copenhagen, Denmark - "Carlsberg brewery"

- Sleepy today. Had room service coffee at 7:30AM and breakfast yet to do. We got a got a late start today.

- We took shuttle & then walked to City Hall. While enroute we found Rick Steve's favorite bakery (Kransekagehuset) for a couple of danish - very good by the ones that we had in Germany were better. We toured City Hall but didn't find much of interest besides the WC. We then caught the #26 bus to the Carlsberg brewery. The tour was interesting, although you don't see the actual brewery, just exhibits. However, you do get two large sample beers. My wife's favorite was Carl's Special. Our second beer was a wheat beer (Hvede - pronounced veed-la.). We sat and talked with a Danish couple (Bjarne & Anamarie) over our beers beers. They were from Aakborg in Northern Denmark, home to Aalborg Akvavit, Denmark's most famous aquavit. They were very pleasant and we had a nice conversation.

- We took the #26 back , getting off early, to the City Hall area, even though the #26 went all of the wayto the ship. We had a quickie lunch of ristet polse "all the way". My wife wanted to go to the sweater store, among others.

- we caught the 3PM shuttle back to the ship.

- Went to the "Reflections" lounge to watch the sail out. Then, we went to Dick Morris' talk on "who will win the presidential election". He predicts Bush.

- After napping a little in Dick Morris' talk, we remained so very tired that we we went to some lounge chairs on deck 4 to read; and also slept for a half hour.

- We had one dance while waiting for the restaurant to open. Tonight was "informal" and we had, in the main dining room, the same beef dish that was served in the Ocean Liners specialty restaurant. The Ocean Liners' version was definitely of better quality although this was good.