Cape Verde had no known inhabitants before the Portuguese founded Ribeira Grande, today Cidade Velha, on Santiago in 1462, and its old drink is not beer but grogue, a spirit distilled from sugar cane that is pressed in a trapiche and made mostly on Santo Antão and Santiago. Beer came from Portugal: Central de Cervejas of Lisbon, the maker of Sagres, began exporting beer to its overseas territories, Cape Verde among them, in 1943, and in the early 2000s still named Cape Verde a main export market of Sagres. No source found records a brewery on the islands before the 1980s.
The first brewing company is CERIS, in Praia on Santiago. Its start is dated in three ways: Wikipedia says it was set up in 1988 as a mixed public and private company; the Praia commercial register carries it under number 121/1987/12/04; and the history of Central de Cervejas lists a stake bought in 1984 in "CERIS - Empresa de Cervejas de Cabo Verde". In 2001 it was taken over by the Madeira Brewery, the maker of Coral beer since 1969, and signed an establishment convention with the government on 16 September 2001. Coral was brewed in Praia until Strela replaced it in November 2006.
By 2007 CERIS was in trouble: its audited accounts to March 2007 showed negative equity of 434.6 million escudos, and customs claimed about 200 million escudos in unpaid duties for 1999 to March 2007. On 14 May 2007 the government approved a new establishment convention with Grupo D - West África, a Spanish company of the COBEGA group, which was to buy the Madeira Brewery's stake and restructure the company; it was signed on 23 May 2007. Through Equatorial Coca-Cola Bottling Company, in Cape Verde since 1997, COBEGA already held 99.43 per cent of Cavibel, the Coca-Cola bottler, and the capital of CERIS later passed to Cavibel. Wikipedia dates the sale to the Cavibel shareholders to January 2005, which the 2007 papers do not support.
Strela, Creole for "star" and also called Fidju di Téra, started in Praia in November 2006. By 2009 it was the second most drunk beer in the country, with 35 per cent of the market, and the French Wikipedia says it passed Sagres that year; Super Bock and Sagres from Portugal are still common. It goes to The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal and the Netherlands, and since 2011 to Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where the diaspora lives. It won an iTQi taste award in Brussels in 2016. In October 2019 the cabinet extended the owners' exemption from the 10 per cent special consumption tax after they said beer could not be made in Cape Verde without state support. CERIS joined the VLB Berlin in August 2021, and on 12 May 2022 the group opened a 9 million euro brewing line in Praia Negra, 12,000 bottles an hour; the group calls Strela the only industrial beer made in the country. In August 2025 the Praia register recorded its board for 2023 to 2025.
Craft brewing began in 2018. That August Expresso das Ilhas wrote of Pr!m!us, a planned brewpub in Praia that was to sell its beer from November or December 2018, and of Keven Gonçalves, a chemical engineer and biologist from Assomada who had brewed two 20-litre home batches; no source shows that Pr!m!us opened. Gonçalves moved the brewing into his garage as Cervejaria Afreecana, now a brewpub in Assomada that calls itself the country's first craft brewery, with beers made from local fruit, sugar cane and spices. On Sal, the pub Bodeguinha Craft Beer in Santa Maria says its craft beers are brewed on Sal and Santiago.
