# Gabon

Country page of DA Caps, a collection of beer bottle caps. Web page: https://dacaps.imcoll.com/country/ga/info

- Official name: Gabonese Republic
- Local name: République gabonaise
- Caps in the collection: 1 (https://dacaps.imcoll.com/country_caps/159)
- Brands: 1

## Beer in Gabon

Gabon's old drinks are not beers. Palm wine, the sap of the oil palm fermented with bark and roots, is in such demand that in 2018 the press warned that oil palms were being felled to get it. Musungu, or vin de canne (malamba in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea), is pressed sugar cane juice fermented for about two weeks, often with bitter bark; in Port-Gentil it has become mostly women's work. Beer came with the French, who took the coast by treaties from 1839, founded Libreville in 1849 and from 1910 ruled Gabon as one of the four territories of French Equatorial Africa. No earlier brewery is recorded; the story told of the national one is that it was created so that Gabon would no longer depend on neighbouring Cameroon.

That brewery is the Société des Brasseries du Gabon, Sobraga, founded in 1966 by Pierre Castel with the young Albert-Bernard Bongo, who introduced him to President Léon Mba; the company says the idea was born in 1965 in the Libreville bar Le Frigidaire. The first works stood in Libreville. Wikipedia lists later plants at Franceville (1971), Port-Gentil (1972), Oyem (1976) and Mouila (1983), but a French trade report of February 1972 already describes a Port-Gentil plant enlarged in 1970 to 125,000 hl a year and a Franceville plant still to be built. Castel Beer has been brewed under licence since 1970. In 1987 the Libreville works moved to Owendo, where the company sits. In January 1990 Castel bought Brasseries et Glacières Internationales and joined its African breweries to it; in 2001 it took over the state water company Eauleco at Léconi, now Soboleco, which bottles Andza mineral water.

Régab, a pale lager, is the national beer. Its name is said to be short for régie gabonaise des boissons, and the street reads it as Regardez les Gabonais boire. Sobraga also brews 33 Export, Castel Beer and Guinness under licence. A lighter Régab bleue in a 50 cl can came out on 22 June 2016, and in 2018 Régab won a gold medal at the Monde Selection awards in Valencia, 84.8 points out of 100 among more than 400 beers.

Craft brewing has hardly started. Micro-Brasseries Okev, begun in South Africa in 2007 by the Gabonese brewer Antoine Mfa Mezui and made a limited company in 2017, brews in Port-Gentil; on 31 May 2018 it presented its cassava beer Timba Beer at the Beach Club in Libreville, beside the amber Tadibosch, the white J27 and the dark Okev Beer, with a plan to have Sobraga brew Timba under licence. No later news was found. Beer Minko, a Gabonese brand dating from 2019, is brewed near Paris; in August 2025 the press announced its sale in Libreville bars soon, without a date.

Sobraga makes more than 80 per cent of the drinks produced locally. In March 2024 it raised its drink prices by 21 per cent but spared Régab, and on 19 and 20 July 2024 it held the first Festibière on the Libreville seafront. The Mouila plant, shut for 14 months of modernisation and flood protection, reopened at the end of December 2024. Xavier Jaffret took over as director general on 1 July 2025 from Fabrice Bonatti, who left for the Société des Boissons du Maroc. In January 2026 Régab went up by 50 CFA francs, to 600 for the 65 cl bottle, its first rise since 2010, after the 2026 finance law raised the specific tax on local beer to 40 francs a litre. Sobraga celebrated its 60th anniversary on 9 May 2026.

Sources:
- [Wikipedia (fr): Société des boissons rafraîchissantes du Gabon](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_des_boissons_rafra%C3%AEchissantes_du_Gabon)
- [Wikipedia (fr): Régab](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9gab)
- [Entreprises coloniales: Société des brasseries du Gabon (Sobraga), Owendo (2023)](https://www.entreprises-coloniales.fr/afrique-equatoriale/Sobraga.pdf)
- [Wikipedia: Malamba (drink)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malamba_(drink))
- [L'Union: Le palmier à huile menacé par les fabricants de vin de palme (2018)](https://www.lunion-archives.org/web.11/dmdocuments/N12811-04-09-2018-024.pdf)
- [L'Union: La fabrication du Musungu, une opportunité d'emploi au féminin (2020)](https://www.lunion-archives.org/web.11/dmdocuments/N13452-21-10-2020-013.pdf)
- [L'Union: La 1ère bière artisanale made in Gabon bientôt commercialisée (2018)](https://www.lunion-archives.org/web.11/dmdocuments/N12723-16-05-2018-005.pdf)
- [L'Union: Antoine Mfa Mezui, maître brasseur de la Timba beer (2018)](https://www.lunion-archives.org/web.11/dmdocuments/N12797-14-17-08-2018-023.pdf)
- [GabonReview: Du bleu ciel dans la bière locale (2016)](https://www.gabonreview.com/bleu-ciel-biere-locale/)
- [Africtelegraph: Une distinction internationale de la Régab à Valence (2018)](https://africtelegraph.com/gabon-une-distinction-internationale-de-la-regab-a-valence-en-espagne)
- [GabonMediaTime: Libreville hôte du premier festival de la bière (2024)](https://gabonmediatime.com/gabon-libreville-hote-du-premier-festival-de-la-biere-ce-vendredi-19-juillet/)
- [EcoMatin: Le groupe Castel nomme un nouveau directeur général pour sa filiale brassicole (2025)](https://ecomatin.net/le-groupe-castel-nomme-un-nouveau-directeur-general-pour-sa-filiale-brassicole-au-gabon)
- [GabonReview: Beer Minko trace sa route vers le marché gabonais (2025)](https://www.gabonreview.com/du-brassin-parisien-a-libreville-beer-minko-trace-sa-route-vers-le-marche-gabonais/)
- [EcoMatin: Castel augmente les prix de sa bière phare pour la première fois depuis 16 ans (2026)](https://ecomatin.net/gabon-castel-augmente-les-prix-de-sa-biere-phare-pour-la-premiere-fois-depuis-16-ans)
- [GabonReview: Sobraga, 60 ans de puissance industrielle (2026)](https://www.gabonreview.com/sobraga-60-ans-de-puissance-industrielle-lempire-du-brasseur-qui-a-faconne-le-quotidien-des-gabonais/)
- [BeerAdvocate: Societe des Brasseries du Gabon (SOBRAGA)](https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/37262/)
- [Wikipedia (fr): Histoire du Gabon](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_du_Gabon)
- [Archontology: Gabon, Polity Style 1958-2026](https://archontology.org/nations/gabon/01_polity.php)
- [Wikipedia: Flag of Gabon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Gabon)
- [FOTW Flags of the World: Gabon, pre-independence flags](https://www.fotw.info/flags/ga-hist.html)

## Breweries (1)

- [Société des Brasseries du Gabon](https://dacaps.imcoll.com/brewery/2395.md) — 1 cap, 1966–