Dr Emil Christian Hansen (1842-1909)

Emil Christian Hansen came from a modest family. Originally trained as a house painter and a primary school teacher, Hansen later became a botanist and a mycologist. Hansen is said to have written novels and sold them: Form this income he financed his studies.

Emil Christian Hansen in 1876 was awarded a gold medal by the University of Copenhagen for his study of the coprophilous fungi of Denmark and three years later gained a PhD for a thesis on yeasts.

In 1877, he was employed as a fermentation physiologist as the Carlsberg Brewery. In 1883, Hansen succeeded in producing bottom-fermented beer on a large scale for the first time, using ‘the sop-called pure culture yeast’.

Hansen used a dilution method to isolate pure cultures of brewing yeast, derived from a mixed culture that occasionally produced poor quality beer.

This made it possible to prevent beer form being spoiled by the action of wild yeasts in the vat. In the same year, for the first time in history, the Carlsberg Brewery started industrial production of lager beer with one of the Hansen’s pure culture.
Dr Emil Christian Hansen (1842-1909)