Tuborg or not Tuborg
Well, I’m on borg, put it that way, with Carlsberg’s new brewing of Tuborg Gold at Waterloo Brewery in Kitchener, Ontario.
Tuborg, once Carlsberg’s great national rival, joined the Carlsberg fold in a historic 1969 merger. Carlsberg has since expanded greatly, acquiring breweries across the world with Carlsberg often made locally. Tuborg, for its part, still finds a sale in Denmark as well as some foreign markets including China and India.
Carlsberg Group bought out Waterloo Brewing at the end of last year, and makes some brands here now for our market.* Tuborg Gold is one, and Carlsberg itself, as the Ontario Beer Store listing states Canada as place of origin.
I knew the Danish import in Quebec in the 1970s, all-malt Tuborg Gold. This was not the American Tuborg, brewed since 1972 by Carling Breweries, but the Danish original. The Gold is brewed at a higher strength than Tuborg Green, the domestic staple of the brewery. Both were introduced before 1900, but today there are many other Tuborg iterations.
The import as I recall it was rich and elegant in palate. The American one used some corn grits according to James Robertson’s 1978 The Great American Beer Book. From 1979 it became all-malt, according to a later edition of the book. I never thought either American one equaled the import.
On Europe travels Danish Tuborg eluded me. In recent decades it popped up in Ontario, both Green and Gold labels, brewed by Carlsberg in Turkey.
I bought those numerous times, out of deference to a historic name more than anything else. These were not to my thinking very good, grainy in taste and thin on the palate.
Turning to the Ontario-brewed Gold, I find this much better. It has notes of fresh hay, a moderate sweetness, maybe the fennel note mentioned on the Carlsberg page for the Danish original. The beer definitely evokes a true northern European beer taste, or one slice of it.
The Canadian Gold is 5.5% abv, the Danish 5.8%, so one difference there, but immaterial by my lights.
In sum, a natural-tasting, good drink of beer, a solid addition to the pils portfolio of the province whether macro, craft or import.
I will be interested to try the Carlsberg, never a particular favourite of mine (vs. aspects of its history), but sometimes local brewing adds that je ne sais quoi.
If I’m not mixing metaphors, det vil tiden vise.
…
*Waterloo Brewing has origins in Brick Brewery, an early Canadian craft brewery, from 1984.
© 2015-2023 Copyright of Gary M. Gillman. All Rights Reserved. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, any reproduction, distribution, or display of the materials published at https://www.beeretseq.com without the express written permission of the copyright owner, is strictly prohibited.