Beer came late to Azerbaijan, a mostly Muslim country where wine was the old drink. The first brewing in the sources used here is German: settlers from Württemberg founded the colonies of Helenendorf (now Göygöl) and Annenfeld in 1819, and the Vohrer brothers' firm at Helenendorf is recorded as building beer and cognac factories, with no dates given.

The large brewery was built in the Soviet years. The plant at Khirdalan, a town about 10 km from Baku, was commissioned in 1969 for the Baku-Pivo industrial association and counted among the six biggest breweries of the USSR (a French industrial history dates it 1972). Ganja had the other main brewery. In 1997 the French group Castel, with a local partner, Baki-Pive, bought both; the Ganja plant was closed, and the Khirdalan plant reopened after rebuilding on 16 October 2000 as Baki-Castel, with 200 employees and 250,000 hl a year, about 60 per cent of the beer made in the country.

Private breweries followed. The NZS brewery of Azeri LLC was laid down in 1997 in the NZS settlement of Baku, brewed its first beer in 1998 and began to sell draught beer in March 2001 after a rebuilding. In 2003 it won a prize in the light-lager class at the Prague beer festival, which it calls the first and only such award in the country. Its unpasteurised NZS beer has been in bottles since the summer of 2019 (NZS Premium, 4.8%). BeerAdvocate also lists Bakı-Praqa at Novkhani near Baku, added in 2015 with five beers, none active now.

In May 2008 Baltika, of the Carlsberg group, agreed to buy Baki-Castel from Castel's holding company and planned about USD 20 million for the work; it held 92 per cent, according to APA. The plant became Baltika-Baku in January 2009 and reopened on 20 May 2009. The country then drank about 2.4 million decalitres a year, 6 litres a head in 2007 against 3.9 in 2006, mostly Xirdalan, Efes and Baltika. Since February 2017 the plant is Carlsberg Azerbaijan, with a capacity of 8 million decalitres a year, a share of 70-75 per cent of local output and the brands Xırdalan, Carlsberg, Baltika, Əfsanə, Kronenbourg 1664 Blanc and Seth & Riley's Garage.

The brewer has moved to local raw materials. A barley project with AzərŞəkər began in 2019, the first Xırdalan from Azerbaijani barley came off the line on 16 September 2021, a malting plant was announced for January 2024, and a memorandum of May 2025 with the Economy Ministry covers local raw and packaging materials in 2025-2030. Craft brewing is new. On 5 September 2026 a microbrewery with Czech equipment opened in the Okean Prime restaurant in Baku (about 2,000 hl a year, a German-style and a Czech-style lager), and the same supplier is to equip a brewery for the Helenendorf company at Göygöl in January or February 2027. At Gabala a brewery and soft-drink plant of 147 million litres a year, planned with Georgia's Georgian Beer Company (Zedazeni), was under construction in January 2026.