It all began in Skælskør, Denmark, in 1883 when the brothers Jørgen and Adolph Harboe, who shared the dream of brewing beer, they decided together with the grocer Jørgen Lotz to build a brewery which he took the name of Harboe & Lotz's Brewery.

Later, another brewery was built at Adelgade 20 for Jørgen's son, Gunner; he shared the family's dream of brewing beer and for this reason he decided to move to Germany to practice as the brewery's first master brewer. Returning to his country of origin in 1884, Gunner began brewing Bayern beer following the traditional German recipe.

In 1890, the brewery began bottling its beer. In 1910 Gunner handed over the baton to his son Frederik who soon began modernizing the brewery, introducing state-of-the-art machinery and thus saving the brewery time and resources. In the mid-1920s he installed the first rinsing machine and a rotary bottle machine, as well as a machine for corks, cork and labels that would replace and speed up much of the work previously done by hand.

In 1957 the brewery was transformed into a joint stock company Harboes Bryggeri A / S. In 1974, Harboe launched “Bjørne Bryg” which later became Bear Beer, the house's leading brand.