Beer reached the East Indies with the Dutch. In the 19th century the colony drank beer brewed in the Netherlands, among it Haantjesbier of Amsterdam, a heavily hopped beer made to survive the voyage and known in the Indies as bier ajam, 'chicken beer'. A 2018 Gadjah Mada University thesis on Batavia between 1900 and 1942 finds imported beer among the commonest alcoholic drinks of the capital, a sign of standing, and the colonial government trying to profit from the demand through taxes, imports and the founding of breweries.

Local brewing began at the end of the 1920s. Heineken's Nederlandsch-Indische Bierbrouwerijen was registered on 3 June 1929, at first in Medan, and its brewery in Surabaya began commercial production on 21 November 1931 with Java Bier, the forerunner of Bintang; in 1936 Heineken became the main shareholder and the seat moved to Surabaya. In 1931 N.V. Archipel Brouwerij Compagnie was also formed in Batavia around the Bremen brewer Beck's, with the trading house Geo Wehry and Co on its board. It built a steel-framed brewery in Batavia and a second one in Singapore in 1933; its Anker beer dates from 1932, and Dutch owners later renamed the company De Oranje Brouwerij.

After independence the Surabaya company became Heineken's Indonesische Bierbrouwerijen Maatschappij in 1951. The state took it over for a time, in 1957 according to Wikipedia and in 1965 according to the company's own timeline, until Heineken returned in 1967 with the new Bintang Baru. It was renamed PT Perusahaan Bir Indonesia in 1972, a second brewery opened at Tangerang in 1973, and on 2 September 1981, after taking over PT Brasseries de l'Indonesie of Medan, it became PT Multi Bintang Indonesia and listed in Jakarta and Surabaya; Surabaya brewing moved to a new brewery at Sampang Agung, near Mojokerto, in 1997. The Batavia company took the name Delta Djakarta in 1970, brewed Carlsberg under licence from 1982, listed in 1984, came under San Miguel in the 1990s and moved its brewery from North Jakarta to Bekasi in 1997. In July 1986 PT San Miguel Indonesia began brewing Asahi under licence, said to be the first outside Japan.

The independent PT Bali Hai Brewery Indonesia was founded in 1975 and named after a song of the musical South Pacific. By its own history it released Draft Beer in 1988 and Bali Hai Premium, a Munich lager, in 1993, made its first exports in 1995, and brought out Panther Stout in 1999, relaunched as Panther Black in 2018. The 50th anniversary was held at its Tambun plant in Bekasi in 2025. In Denpasar, Bali, a brewery makes Prost, a lager.

Beer is legal but tightly regulated. Presidential Regulation 74 of 2013 divides drinks into classes, A being up to 5 percent alcohol, and allows sale in hotels, bars and restaurants, duty-free shops and places set by the local authority, with class A also in retail shops; from April 2015 Trade Ministry Regulation 6 of 2015 took beer off minimarket shelves, and Multi Bintang's first-quarter net profit fell by about 42 percent. The Heineken stake went to Asia Pacific Breweries in 2010 and came back to Heineken in September 2013; Bintang Radler of 2014 was the first flavoured beer brewed in the country. Craft brewing grew in Bali from 2019, when Black Sand Brewery opened at Canggu; Island Brewing moved to a purpose-built brewery at Kaba Kaba in 2022, Kura Kura was born in the pandemic, and Islands of Imagination was named Country Champion Brewery at the 2024 Asia Beer Championship. In 2025 Multi Bintang's net profit rose 3.6 percent to Rp 1.18 trillion, and Delta Djakarta's net sales were Rp 674.5 billion, up 4 percent.