Beer is old in these lands but was never the main drink: the ancient Israelites were far more drawn to wine, and Jews took to beer only after the exile to Babylonia in the sixth century BC. Under the British Mandate (1920-1948) beer was mostly imported; in 1937 a tariff of 10 mils a litre was put on imported beer to shelter local brewers from rivals in Syria and Lebanon. The first industrial brewery was Max Brau in Acre, opened in 1926 by two brothers from Poland, Aharon-Zvi (Herman) and Mordechai (Motel) Rosenberg, who chose the site for the water of the Kabri springs; it brewed a Pilsner and closed after about three years.
The Palestine Brewery (Eretz Israel Beer Industries) was founded in 1934 by the French banker Gaston Dreyfus and James Armand de Rothschild, who saw a demand among the British in Palestine. Tempo places it in Rishon LeZion; Wikipedia's article on Nesher Beer says Bat Yam. Its Nesher (Eagle) Pilsner and the sweet dark Nesher Malt were the first industrially brewed beers in the country, from 1935, and the eagle logo was picked in a public contest in the Palestine Post. In 1940 the brewery was commissioned to supply Australian troops in Palestine, and by 1942 it had to be enlarged. Tempo says Goldstar was first made there in 1950, Wikipedia that it came from the Cabeer Brewery in Rishon LeZion. Tempo calls the 1934 plant the first beer brewery in Israel, although the Rosenbergs' partnership was registered in 1926.
The National Brewery in Netanya was built from April 1952 by investors led by the American brewery executive Louis Hertzberg and on its opening in May 1953 was the largest brewery in the Middle East, with a capacity of 400,000 barrels a year. Its Abir beer sold until the mid-1980s and reached the United States in 1954. Maccabee, a pilsner named for the Maccabees, followed in 1968. In 1973 the National, Palestine and Galilee breweries merged and held 90% of the market. The Canadian developer Murray Goldman bought the company in 1976, began brewing Budweiser under licence in 1984 and sold it to Tempo in 1985.
Two companies have dominated since. Tempo, of Netanya, has imported Heineken since 1992; in January 2005 Heineken, which held 17.8% of Tempo, took 40% of a new company for Tempo's beverage business, and Heineken has been brewed in Netanya since 2014. Its rival, Israel Beer Breweries (Carlsberg Israel), was founded in 1992 in Ashkelon by the Central Bottling Company, the Coca-Cola bottler, with Carlsberg, to break Tempo's near monopoly; it brews Carlsberg and Tuborg, and Carlsberg sold its stake to the CBC Group in 2008. The two hold about 70% of the market.
Craft brewing grew out of home brewing: the Israeli Beer Club, founded in 2002 by Shai Cooper and Gadi Deviri, ran contests whose entrants later founded Alexander, Dancing Camel, Shapiro and Malka. Dancing Camel in Tel Aviv, usually called the first microbrewery (sources give 2006 and 2009), was followed by Malka (2006), the Golan Brewery in Katzrin (late 2006), Alexander in Emek Hefer (2008), Jem's in Petah Tikva, the first kosher microbrewery (2009), and Shapiro in Beit Shemesh and Srigim (2011). Craft held about 4% of the market in 2026, when Israelis drank some 15 litres of beer a head. The big companies have moved in: Tempo bought into Shapiro and Israel Beer Breweries opened the craft brewery Shikma in July 2021, while HaCarem Spirits is a partner of Malka, whose Tefen plant also brews Negev and Herzl. Dancing Camel was sold in September 2022 and reopened in October 2023 as White Rabbit Brewery, and in May 2026 Jerusalem Brewing Co. started in the Talpiot plant of Hatch, which had closed.
