In 1811, Jacob Christian Jacobsen, the founder of Carlsberg, enters the world. When his father dies in 1835, J.C. Jacobsen takes over as a brewer. J.C. was born to brew. Driven by his passion for beer and an early interest in the natural sciences, J.C. Jacobsen sets out on a lifelong journey to improve the quality of beer. His first stop is Bavaria where he studies the brewing techniques for a new beer at Gabriel Sedlmayr's zum Spaten brewery in Munich. In the summer of 1845, carrying two pots of Spaten yeast in a customized hat box, J.C. returns to Denmark by stagecoach.

On this long journey, he keeps the yeast cool by stopping frequently and dousing it with cold water. J.C. Jacobsen's first batches of lager are made in his mother's copper wash basin. They are refined in his brewery till he gets them just right.  This new lager needed a new brewery with larger cool storage space. Taking the name of his five-year-old son, Carl, and the Danish word for hill, "bjerg", he builds his new brewery just outside Copenhagen. With that, Carlsberg is born in 1847. International approval came just 21 years later when the first Carlsberg beer was exported to Great Britain.

J.C. Jacobsen uses the incident to modernise the brewery yet again. He installs a cooling system that improves product quality and leads to a dramatic increase in sales. Now, Jacobsen's son Carl returns from studying brewing process in Europe. He is invited to brew his own beer in the newly constructed annex brewery. He names his brewery New Carlsberg. The first thing Carl does is to meet market demand by pushing capacity and cutting his father's brewing process in half. In 10 short years, sales at his New Carlsberg surpass that of his father's Old Carlsberg. Carl is selling his beer under the Carlsberg name but much to his father's dissaproval, Carl produces a beer with a shorter storage time. This sparks a family fued between father and son. J.C. Jacobsen has his lawyers evict Carl from the Annex and legally attempts to limit his production capacity.  He even tries to force Carl to change the name of his brewery. J.C. also wants to keep the label design to himself, but Carl does not cooperate. Father and son eventually reconciled in October 1886, just before J.C. Jacobsen's death.

By 1883, professor Emil Christian Hansen develops the key to a perfectly consistent beer production. He discovers that organisms are composed of different fungi and that yeast culture can be cultivated. He isolates a pure yeast culture and changes the concept of brewing forever. The method of cultivating pure yeast is worth a fortune and will revolutionise the quality of beer worldwide. But instead of keeping it secret, J.C. Jacobsen decides to give it away sharing his breakthrough with brewmasters around the world. Maybe J.C. Jacobsen knew the original could never be beaten or maybe he knew in doing so, there would be a little bit of Carlsberg in a multitude of beers. Regardless of his reasons, original Carlsberg yeast is used on most of the single lagers that are crafted today.

Later in 1909, the Danish chemist Doctor Søren P.L. Sørensen, head of Carlsberg Laboratory's Chemical Department, develops the pH scale at the Carlsberg Laboratory. His pioneering research has had a profound effect on beer and science. The pH scale has become the standard by which we determine how a liquid will react and interact with living organisms. Throughout the 20th century, the Carlsberg Laboratory contributed to the important study of enzymes and continue to do so today.