The Jennings × Mikkeller Collab

Back in October 2008, Mikkel was invited to Jennings to brew a beer for a UK beer festival. He had only really just got started with his brewery. In fact, that was his first collaboration outside Denmark. The beer they made that day was christened ‘Viking's Return’, a hoppy pale ale crafted with 100 per cent British ingredients and Bramling Cross hops and a play on history. ‘We called it Viking’s Return because the Vikings came back...as in me. I came back to England,’ Mikkel laughs, referring to the early Viking invasions of the north of England.

And now, eighteen years later, he has come back again to plan another beer.

What Mikkel found in 2008 was an 'old school, very British brewery, which was amazing.' This huge scale brewery occupied the same Castle Brewery site Jennings moved to in 1874, beside Cockermouth Castle and at the confluence of the Rivers Cocker and Derwent. But not too long after his visit, under changing ownership, brewing at Jennings was moved away from Cockermouth and the site closed for making beer in 2022.

Then, in July 2025, it opened again under local, independent ownership with head brewer Buster Grant and managing director Chris France. The classic recipes were restored and improved from the old brew sheets and the pure Lakeland water from the ancient well beneath the brewery used to brew every beer once more.

I am in the brewery as Mikkel takes in the changes for himself, touring the site with Buster and the Jennings team. We move through, past the old hop back, past the grist machines dating to the 1950s and around the vast old tanks, learning the many Jennings ghost stories along the way. Mikkel reads the building like a brewer reads a recipe, recognising the old fermentation vessels, heat exchangers, malting machines. Then he gets to experience a brew being made on the shining new kits, recently doubled in capacity and which now gleam in the building’s old rooms. ‘It has gone from something very old, traditional, something that everybody knew, to now a new version of that, but still with the respect for the old days,’ Mikkel says. ‘It’s amazing.’

Later, sitting on the taproom terrace beside the river, Buster and Chris walk him through the core range. They talk recipe ideas. The new beer will be a modern take on a Jennings classic. Mikkel had first thought of Sneck Lifter, the dark ale, as the base, but the idea shifts as the tasting goes on, with Cocker Hoop, the golden bitter, more likely. It will be suited to being served colder than cask tradition, at 4 to 6 degrees, on keg and gives them an incredible grounding to start playing around with new hops, tastes and flavours.

The name was a very simple decision. Everything fell into place naturally. ‘We're gonna call this beer LAKE + MOUNTAIN because we’re in the Lakes and my last name means a lake in the mountains.’ Mikkel says. In Danish, ‘bjerg’ means mountain and ‘sø’ means lake. ‘So, it makes a lot of sense.’

The beer will be brewed three times – at Jennings in Cockermouth, at Mikkeller Brewpub London in Exmouth Market and at Warpigs in Copenhagen’s Meatpacking District. The three sites will use the same recipe but draw on different local water in what all the brewers are looking forward to as a ‘challenge’. ‘Every brewer buys the hops, the malts, the yeast, the equipment from the same places. But the water is what stands out,’ Mikkel says. The well water at Jennings, drawn from beneath the brewery, is an incredible foundation. ‘I tasted that water here today and it’s very clean and it’s very beautiful, very soft.’

He sees the three brews as a test of place. ‘It's always fun to brew the same beer in different places.’ He laughs. ‘And we’ll see which one turns out the better.’ It is no small challenge either. One recipe across three cities and three waters will stretch both brew teams, but that is part of the appeal. A shared experiment between Cockermouth, London and Copenhagen, no doubt with bragging rights attached.

Mikkel likes to make it clear he has a regard for any brewing that lasts. ‘I enjoy drinking traditional beers, beers that have been brewed for many, many years. I love that from Germany, I love that from Czech Republic, and I love that from the old English cask ale styles of beers too.’ So, does the Jennings collaboration brings a new angle to the beers chalked on the Mikkeller boards behind nearly fifty bars around the world? ‘It will, yes. We are known for lagers a lot. And here is something different, classic, but with that Mikkeller twist. People expect that from us – that we take some of the more old school way of doing things and bring it to the new world.’

After the tasting, the visit goes the way of the first one in 2008, into the pubs of Cockermouth. Which is how we end up at the Crooked River Brewing Co taproom on Marketplace – a craft brewery founded in Cockermouth in 2022, the same year Jennings closed. And how we end up under that Mikkeller poster, with everyone shaking their head at the odds.

Then it is back to the Jennings taproom to properly toast the collaboration alongside an evening of local musicians, guitars and singing. Proper community having a great time over great beer. Another passion for both breweries. Then, late in the evening, Buster appears with something truly special. He has dug out the original 2008 brew sheet for Viking’s Return, and Mikkel can’t contain his surprise and delight at what he assumed had been lost. Having uncovered it in the Jennings brewing archives earlier in the day, Buster walks Mikkel through the details of a brew he made nearly twenty years ago at the start of everything, and gives him a copy to take home. ‘It’s like time travel.’ Mikkel says. ‘So weird and brilliant to see it again.’

We all leave knowing the next beer is already taking shape in its shadow.

LAKE + MOUNTAIN is set to be brewed at Jennings, Mikkeller Brewpub (Exmouth Market) in London and Warpigs Brewpub in Copenhagen at the end of January 2027 and it will be available in keg and cans across the UK and in Mikkeller bars.