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5 days ago
9
There's always one friend who insists on having one 'very quick drink' before they have to head home.
Now, Carlsberg may have the answer for them – the world's smallest beer.
The Danish brewing company has created a tiny bottle filled with a single drop of lager, complete with a Carlsberg label and a sealed cap.
Measuring only 12mm (0.47 inch) in height, the adorable little bottle is around the same size as a grain of rice.
It contains just 0.05 millilitres (0.005 centilitres) of liquid to be exact, or just 0.008 per cent of what you'd find in a pint!
Remarkable photos show the miniscule glass container with a normal bottle for comparison – and the famous brewery insists they are not AI-generated.
According to Carlsberg, the bottle is a piece of art that hopes to 'inspire people to drink in a more responsible and moderate way'.
'To promote responsible drinking, we present our most moderate idea ever,' said Casper Danielsson, head of communications at Carlsberg Sweden.
It contains just a single drop of non-alcoholic beer - 0.05 millilitres to be exact, or just 0.008 per cent of what you'd find in a pint
The Danish brewing company has created a tiny bottle filled with a single drop of lager, complete with a Carlsberg label and a sealed cap
Danielsson continues: 'The world's smallest beer holds only one-twentieth of a milliliter and is so small that it's easy to miss.
'But the message is much bigger – we want to remind people of the importance of drinking responsibly.'
The tiny glass bottle has been created especially by Glaskomponent, a Swedish company specializing in glassblowing for laboratory equipment.
Åsa Strand, a miniature artist from Sweden used to making pieces for doll houses, crafted and applied the detachable cap, label and inks.
Of course, a 0.05-millilitre helping of even the strongest beverage known to humankind wouldn't get anyone the slightest bit drunk.
But as part of its campaign to encourage moderate and responsible drinking, Carlsberg has filled the bottle with non-alcoholic beer.
It was specially brewed at Carlsberg's experimental brewery in Falkenberg, Sweden, to deliver an 'intense taste experience' to compensate for the small dosage.
RISE, a Swedish state-owned research and innovation institute, made it possible to fill the bottle using ultra-narrow tubes designed for fibre optics.
Remarkable photos show the miniscule glass container with a normal bottle for comparison - and the famous brewery insists they are not AI-generated
According to Carlsberg, the bottle is a piece of art that hopes to 'inspire people to drink in a more responsible and moderate way'
Lager or ale?
Beer is prepared using four basic ingredients - water, malted grains (like barely or wheat), yeast and hops.
All beers, by definition, are either an ale or a lager, depending on what type of yeast they use.
Lagers are fermented using a bottom fermenting yeast at cool temperatures, while ales are fermented with a top fermenting yeast at warmer temperatures.
Lagers generally tend to be light-gold in colour (although jet black lagers do exist). Ales, meanwhile, include styles like stouts (including Guinness), bitters and barely wines.
Today, more than 90 per cent of beer produced worldwide is lager, not ale.
'Crafting and applying the colour, cap and label for a bottle just twelve millimeters tall has been incredibly challenging and great fun,' said Ms Strand.
'There was no established way of doing this, but with precision, patience and creativity we managed to make it work.'
The experts made several prototypes but this is the smallest one – and they now plan to put it on public display at Carlsberg Museum in Copenhagen.
Now, they are challenging students at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm to outdo them.
As part of a competition, the creator of an even smallest beer will win 10,000 SEK (£795) and a visit to the Carlsberg Research Laboratory in Copenhagen.
Appropriately, in the brewing industry, a 'small' beer doesn't necessarily relate to the size of the serving, but the alcoholic content of the brew.
For example, London-based brewery Small Beer is known for producing beers with low alcohol content, usually somewhere between 0.5 per cent and 2.8 per cent.
Interestingly, Gen Z, those born between 1996 and 2010, are drinking less compared with the older generations, surveys and studies have suggested.
The tiny glass bottle has been created especially by Glaskomponent, a Swedish company specializing in glassblowing for laboratory equipment
Carlsberg says its latest creation is part of its rich history of 'innovation and research' since it was founded in 1847 by Danish industrialist J. C. Jacobsen.
It was at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen in 1883 that Emil Christian Hansen, head of the physiology department, developed a method to purify yeast, making it possible to make quality beer from every brew.
Over a decade later, Danish chemist Søren Sørensen working at the lab came up with the concept of pH, which still today helps control the flavour and prevent infection by microorganisms.
More recently, Carlsberg has created the 'ZerO2 cap' for its bottles that removes oxygen from the liquid and make it taste fresher for longer.
WHEN DID HUMANS START DRINKING BEER?
Humans have had a long history of consuming alcohol.
It is believed the primitive cultures of Mesopotania could have been brewing malted barley scraps as far back as 10,000BC but there are no records of it.
The earliest proof of beer-drinking dates back to Northern China 9,000 years ago.
This ancient brew was made using hawthorn fruit, Chinese wild grapes, rice and honey, and is the oldest known fermented beverage in history - older even than wine.
The earliest proof of beer-drinking dates back to Northern China 9,000 years ago
To make it the corn was milled and moistened in the maker’s mouth to convert starches in the corn into fermentable sugars - before it was ‘spat’ into the beer.
Throughout history, the consumption of alcohol may have helped people become more creative, advancing the development of language, art and religion.
This is because alcohol lowers inhibitions and makes people feel more spiritual.
It is believed the Egyptians started brewing beer around 5,000BC, according to the papyrus scrolls.
They were brewing things like dates, pomegranates and other indigenous herbs.
At around 3150 BC, the Egyptians used industrial-scale breweries to provide beer for the workers who built the pyramids of Giza.
Eventually beer made its way from the Middle East to Europe where an abundance of barley crops provided lots of raw ingredient for brewers.
Experts have now found evidence of brewing in Greece during the Bronze Age.
Researchers believe that these prehistoric people enjoyed getting merry with alcoholic drinks for feasts all year-round and not just when the grapes were ripe.
Not only was it considered nutritional it was also a safe alternative to drinking water.
It was in the Middle Ages that malted barley became the main source of fermented sugar and beer became the beverage we are familiar with today.
