Beer in the Andes began with chicha, the maize beer that the Incas and other peoples brewed for rituals and feasts: germinated grain, a boiled wort and a fermentation, with maize in place of barley. Factory beer came with German settlers, and from the end of the 19th century it began to take the place of chicha among the working people. In 1908 the ministry of finance and industry recorded 351 litres of Bolivian beer sent to Europe through the La Paz customs house.

The oldest brewery still at work is in La Paz. Alejandro Wolf began a factory as Wolf & Cia in 1877; it later became the Cerveceria Americana, beside it stood the Cerveceria Nacional. On 20 October 1886 the two merged as the Cerveceria Boliviana Nacional (CBN), owned by four Germans: Federico Groenewold, Luis Ernst, Hugo Preuss and Eugenio Stohmann. Early in the 20th century the brewery was set near the railway station at the entrance to the city, and its beer took the name Paceña, "of La Paz". In 1937 CBN paid the state 20 million bolivianos in taxes, more than the three big tin houses together (19.75 million). After the Second World War the plant malted 30,000 quintals of barley a year, over a third of what it needed, and Munich and Pilsener beers were added.

CBN built a plant at Santa Cruz from 1992, and the can factory ENALBO opened at Oruro in November 1995. In July 1999 the Argentine group Quilmes (Quinsa) paid 71 million dollars for 24 per cent of CBN, which held 65 per cent of the market; it also owned 70 per cent of Taquiña of Cochabamba and all of Ducal of Santa Cruz. In 2001 CBN took in its Santa Cruz companies and Bavaria Unión of Tarija, and on 1 January 2003 Cervecería Taquiña. Quilmes passed to AmBev and then InBev, so CBN is now part of AB InBev. Its brands are Paceña, Huari, Taquiña, Cruceña, Ducal, Astra, Bock, Imperial and Maltín. Huari is brewed at Santiago de Huari near Lake Poopó, at 3,700 metres; the maker's own story says the beer began in 1877 when a German pilgrim tasted the spring water there, but no independent source confirms it. In 2014 the ministry of production put CBN's share at about 70 per cent.

Three firms stand outside CBN. Sureña of Sucre was founded on 6 October 1971 with 16,000 hectolitres a year; since 1989 it has run the only automatic malthouse in the country, which supplies more than fifty craft brewers, and its capacity is now 100,000 hectolitres. The family firm Cervecería Nacional Potosí says it was founded on 10 September 1907; it calls itself the highest brewery in the world, makes Potosina, Potosina Light (2019) and a Bavaria lager, and sent its first export shipment, to the United States, in September 2023. Bebidas Bolivianas (BBO), which Chile's CCU entered in 2014 with 34 per cent, began brewing Heineken's Amstel at Warnes near Santa Cruz in 2023. From 2004 to 2013 the country's output grew by 54 per cent, from 220 to 340 million litres.

Craft brewing began in La Paz with Saya Beer in 1997, called the oldest ale brewery in the country; Ted's of Sucre (Belgian styles only) and, in 2010, Stier of Cochabamba (honey beer) joined it. The German brewmaster Guido Mühr built Prost in Santa Cruz in 2014 and brewed there from June 2015. By 2019 there were about 75 microbreweries, Niebla and Prost the largest, and the Chamber of Brewers counts about 80 founded in 2020. Bolivians drank 34.8 litres of beer a head in 2019. About 1,844 people worked in malt and beer making in 2025, and CBN, with 1,921 direct jobs in 2023, turned 140 on 20 October 2026.