ish brewer Carlsberg has a swanky new ally in the fight to capture the attention of well-heeled drinkers who are shifting away from beer for a variety of reasons, including health concerns.Carlsberg – a multinational giant known for a stable of 500 brands with myriad flavors – is teaming with Copenhagen’s Nordic Food Lab, a house-boat based think tank for foodies that is affiliated with the ultra-chic Noma restaurant. Starting June 1, the duo will work to create a new round of specialty beers for the high-brow Jacobsen microbrew brand.
Noma consistently ranks at or near the top in global restaurant rankings and is renowned for its interpretation of Nordic cuisine. The partnership is to start on June, 1st, and the aim is to develop at least three types of beer together.
Noma’s Nordic Food Lab is experimenting with local ingredients from the Nordic region. The aim is to find herbs or other natural products that so far are not used widely in food, but can add a particular taste. Bee larvae, woodruff and cucumber in pulverized form are a few of the materials Nordic Food Lab has on the radar.
“I could, for example, imagine a Baltic Porter produced with seaweed,” said Morten Ibsen, Jacobsen’s master brewer. Michael Bom Frøst, director of the Nordic Food Lab, said the partners “will look into wild nature for finding ingredients that taste well and help us creating the beer that will be sought after for accompanying a meal.”
The goal is to more aggressively insert beer into the fine dining experience at a time when an increasing amount of people are shifting to wine or reducing alcohol intake for health reasons. The shift is particularly acute in Western Europe.
For brewers, going upscale makes good sense. Beers considered to be premium and super-premium currently account for 18.4% of the global beer market, but provide 32.2% of the value, according to Carlsberg.
Gaining a bigger foothold in fine dining will take some research. “We are hoping not only to develop one new specialty beer a year together, but also getting to understand better which beer fits well with what meal and why,” Khalil Younes, Carlsberg’s sales, marketing and innovation chief said. “We need to work harder to establish legitimacy of beer at dinner table.”
It’s unclear how far the partnership will lead at this point, but Carlsberg hopes to migrate what it learns from Nordic Food Lab to bigger brewing operations. And, Mr. Frøst said “it’s surely Carlsberg’s dream that those beers will end up being served at Noma as a beer menu,” but noted that decision is up to the restaurant’s decision makers.
Carlsberg’s Jacobsen brand may benefit simply through association. Named after the brewery’s founder, Jacobsen usually runs with a price tag of more than EUR7 ($9.18) per liter. But it is still a sliver of the business, standing for only for 0.7 to 1 % of the total beer output of the Danish arm of the Carlsberg group.
