Today the research focuses on four main areas:

  • Brewing technology including beer quality
  • Raw materials with focus on barley breeding
  • Yeast breeding
  • New ingredients

Sustainable brewing,  with an increased focus on energy consumption and waste reduction in order to lower the carbon footprint from the production of beer, is a key focus of several research projects.

Carlsberg Group Research is working on new brewing procedures which can significantly lower the CO2 emissions.

The procedures include:

  • Reducing energy consumption in the brewhouse via an optimised wort boiling and brewing regime
  • Increasing the share of non-malted barley to reduce the energy and water needed for malting
  • Exploiting the use of enzymes to reduce the energy intensive physical process steps in beer production

The main by-product of brewing, brewers spent grain, is today sold as low price cattle feed. Investigations are ongoing, with the aim to convert the spent grain into more valuable products and into CO2 neutral energy, either by combustion or biogas production, or both.

The barley breeding research is focusing on novel barley varieties including:

  • Varieties giving higher yield with same or less agronomic inputs, including water (irrigation)
  • Varieties with higher and better extract yields and extract utilisation leading to lower raw material usage
  • Varieties with lower energy and water requirements during malting and brewing processing.

From a long term perspective, the aim is to improve the raw material basis and processing technologies to reduce the overall environmental impact throughout the entire beer production value chain.