A Danish brewery has turned part of the former Vridsløselille Prison in Albertslund, west of Copenhagen, into a worker-owned beer cooperative, using the historic site not only for brewing, but also for concerts, exhibitions and community events. Slowburn Brewing Co-op moved into the old prison buildings after the facility was closed, bringing kettles, fermentation tanks and a taproom into spaces once associated with confinement and control.
Slowburn brewery turns Vridsløselille’s prison kitchen into a taproom
The former prison kitchen at Vridsløselille Prison now holds brewing equipment. The old laundry room has been converted into a bar and tasting room. Outside, the courtyard has become a beer garden, while the barbed wire that once marked the prison perimeter remains visible.
The contrast is deliberate. Slowburn’s co-owner Dave Perry, originally from Liverpool, told TV 2 Kosmopol that the team has no stories about ghosts or horror, but that the history of the site is still strongly present. In the brickwork, former inmates left traces of their time inside, including carved references to historical events such as the moon landing.
Vridsløselille Prison was completed in 1859 and was partly built by prisoners. For more than a century and a half, it was one of Denmark’s best-known prisons. It later became widely recognisable through Danish popular culture, especially as the prison associated with the fictional character Egon Olsen from the Olsen Gang films.
Today, the area has been renamed Porten Vridsløse, and the former prison complex is being opened to the public as part of a wider transformation of Albertslund. The site is expected to become a new green neighbourhood with homes, cultural spaces and public activity built around the preserved prison architecture.
A worker-owned brewery built on equal pay and shared decisions
Slowburn is not organised as a conventional private brewery. It is a worker-owned cooperative, meaning the company is owned and run by the people who work there. According to the brewery, decisions are made democratically by the working members through a general assembly, following the principle of “one head, one vote”.
The model also shapes pay. Perry told TV 2 Kosmopol that everyone receives the same salary, whether they work in sales, brewing or management. If the company makes a profit, the gain is shared across the cooperative.
The Danish legal system still requires the company to have a director. That role formally went to Perry, although he has said he is not fond of the title because it suggests a hierarchy that the cooperative tries to avoid. He does not make decisions on behalf of the others; the team discusses and agrees on them collectively.
The cooperative currently includes a small group of worker-owners and employees, including Italian head brewer Nadir Perrucon. Slowburn says new members can join the cooperative after working full time at the brewery for a year. They do not have to buy their way in, and once they become members, they participate on equal terms.
How a former Danish prison became part of Albertslund’s urban renewal
The story of Slowburn is part of a larger question facing many European cities: how to reuse historic buildings without turning them into static monuments. Vridsløselille was once a closed enclave. Its walls, corridors and courtyards were designed to separate people from the surrounding city. The current redevelopment seeks to reverse that logic by making the area accessible, walkable and socially active.
The official tourism guide for Copenhagen describes Porten as the public face of the former prison and a growing cultural hub where history, music and city life meet. The site already hosts guided tours, events, pop-up restaurants, markets and cultural activities, while new housing is being developed around the old walls.
Slowburn fits that transition because it gives the buildings an everyday function. A brewery and taproom do not erase the prison’s past, but they change the way people use and perceive the place. Visitors now enter rooms that once belonged to an institution of punishment to drink beer, attend concerts or see local art.
That transformation also reflects a broader Nordic approach to urban regeneration, where former industrial, military or institutional sites are often reused as mixed spaces for culture, housing and small businesses. In this case, the identity of the place remains visible. The barbed wire, the brick walls and the scale of the old prison are not hidden. They become part of a new public setting.
Beer, concerts and local culture inside the old prison walls
Slowburn presents itself as more than a brewery. Its taproom hosts concerts, exhibitions and pop-up events, often in close cooperation with artists and local cultural actors. Classical concerts have been held inside the brewery itself, where the high ceilings and industrial materials create a distinctive acoustic setting between fermentation tanks and bottling equipment.
For Perry, the aim is to help turn a place with historically negative associations into a more positive meeting point. He told TV 2 Kosmopol that the team sees value in giving the old prison buildings a new purpose, instead of letting them stand only as reminders of confinement.
The brewery’s own philosophy is also based on accessibility rather than exclusivity. Slowburn produces a range of beer styles, from pilsners and lagers to IPAs, stouts and mixed-fermentation beers, with a focus on quality, consistency and drinkability. The taproom gives the brewery a public role in the neighbourhood, while the cooperative model gives the workplace a political and social dimension.
Why Slowburn’s prison brewery matters beyond Copenhagen
The Danish brewery in Vridsløselille is a small local story, but it touches on wider European themes: adaptive reuse, cooperative ownership, cultural regeneration and the future of urban heritage. The former prison has not simply been converted into a commercial venue. It is becoming a place where memory, work and community overlap.
That does not remove the darker history of the site. The prison’s architecture still speaks of separation, discipline and control. But Slowburn’s presence changes the relationship between the buildings and the public. A site once designed to keep people apart is now being used to bring them together.
As Albertslund’s new district develops, the challenge will be to preserve that balance. Porten can become a cultural landmark only if the prison’s history remains legible and if new uses do not flatten it into a decorative backdrop. Slowburn’s cooperative brewery offers one possible model: reuse the past without sanitising it, and make heritage part of ordinary civic life.
