British Food Journal Volume 36 Issue 8 1934

Abstract

In considering the lager beer industry of Denmark it may not seem out of place to recall the main facts regarding the researches of E. C. Hansen. It is due to Hansen, a Dane, that the brewing industry throughout the world was placed on a scientific basis so far as the employment of pure yeast cultures is concerned. The brewing of lager beer had been for long successfully practised in certain European countries, notably in Germany. In a word what may be termed the mechanical technik was well understood, but a knowledge of the underlying biological principles so far as they related to the nature and action of the yeast employed had not advanced so far. The study of micro‐organisms in general had but just commenced. Their very existence in many cases was not even suspected. The employment of yeast in brewing practice was largely of the “hit and miss” kind, and continued to be so until fifty years ago. It is true, of course, that excellent beer was being made in this country and on the continent, both top and bottom fermentation kinds, as it had been for centuries past, but the power to control the nature of the beer by using a pure culture of a selected variety of yeast was not possible until Hansen had made his investigations and published the results in 1883.