# Kyrgyzstan

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

- Official name: Kyrgyz Republic
- Local name: Кыргыз Республикасы
- Caps in the collection: 10 (https://dacaps.imcoll.com/country_caps/140)
- Brands: 9

## Beer in Kyrgyzstan

The national drink of Kyrgyzstan is kumis, fermented mare's milk. Brewing is more than a century old: the first brewery on the territory of today's country opened in the late 1880s in Przhevalsk, now Karakol, and belonged to the merchant Ivanov; it was the oldest in the republic. By 1917 beer was also brewed in four smaller works, two in Pishpek (now Bishkek), one in the village of Belovodskoe and one in Jalal-Abad. The best documented is the one that became Arpa in Bishkek: Nikolai Ivanov, a first-guild merchant of Kazalinsk who already ran a vodka works in Pishpek, laid it down in 1906, brewed the first beer in early 1908 and made 19,000 decalitres (dal) that year with 18 workers.

The Ivanov plant ran on horse power until a 6-hp engine arrived in 1922, and by 1936 it brewed almost half a million dal a year. In Soviet times four large breweries grew out of the pre-revolutionary works, and the consumer union Kyrgyzpotrebsoyuz built four medium ones in Osh, Kara-Balta, Talas and Kochkor. By the mid-1980s the republic brewed up to 3 million dal a year. A plan of 1982 to refit Arpa with Czech equipment for 22 million roubles was overtaken by the anti-alcohol campaign of the late 1980s.

Output fell after 1991, to under 2 million dal in 1993 and by a further factor of 2.7 in the next ten years; recovery began in 2005-06 and 2007 reached about 1.4 million dal. In 1997 French investors took a controlling stake in the Bishkek plant, renamed Arpa BCI BBC; the partnership ended after about three years, and in the 2000s the plant invested over 6 million dollars in modernisation and German equipment. The Belovodskoe brewery, created in 1914, was privatised in 1993 as AO Salkyn, became the Kyrgyz-Chinese venture Usu Salkyn Pivo in 2002 (98 per cent Chinese) and, from January 2006, OAO Pivo Belovodskoe. In 2008 the country had 12 breweries with about 1,500 staff; Arpa, Abdysh-Ata and Belovodskoe made over 90 per cent of the beer, Arpa more than half. About 5 million dal were drunk a year, two thirds of it imported.

Abdysh-Ata is the youngest of the big three. It was created in 2000 at Kant, on the site of the sugar plant (laid down in 1929 according to the company; sugar until 1984, then biscuits). It began with a few crates of Nashe ("Ours") beer, sold in December 2000 at Bishkek markets in lemonade bottles, and 500 litres were brewed by the end of the year. German equipment with pasteurisation and cold filtration followed, and in May 2008 it launched the unpasteurised Zhivoe ("Live"). Craft brewing is newer: Aida Musulmankulova and Arzu Kurbanova opened Save the Ales in Bishkek in May 2016 as the first craft brewery in the country, and by 2022 Tengri, Raccoon, Pivovarochka and others supplied the capital's bars, with imported malt and hops.

In 2024 the country made 85.45 million litres of alcoholic drinks, the most since 2014, and beer was 51.3 million litres of it. Beer imports rose by 34.2 per cent to 14.4 million litres, in early 2025 mostly from Kazakhstan and Russia. Exports are small but growing: 947,000 litres went to China in January-May 2025 (up 39.3 per cent), and shipments to Russia in January-April 2026 were 35,640 litres, five times the year before. Arpa installed a German brewhouse and control system in 2018-19, financed through the KyrSEFF energy programme, and the new line uses about 70 per cent less energy per litre. In March 2024 Baltika and Abdysh-Ata signed a strategic cooperation agreement, with no details published. In September 2026 Abdysh-Ata, which employs 1,000 to 1,400 people, said it brews from Russian malt and German hops and keeps a mini-brewhouse for recipe trials and craft beer.

Sources:
- [Good Beer Hunting: Sharing Beer and Community in Bishkek (2022)](https://goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2022/3/16/a-land-of-open-steppe-and-sky-sharing-beer-and-community-in-bishkek-kyrgyzstan)
- [antipodean_wor (LiveJournal): Oldest Bishkek Brewery - Arpa, 1908 (2008)](https://antipodean-wor.livejournal.com/486102.html)
- [Expert Kazakhstan: The Kyrgyz beer market (2008)](https://prg.kz/Document/?doc_id=30200722)
- [Who is Who in Kyrgyzstan: Arpa brewery (company text)](https://who.ca-news.org/company:373)
- [Economist.kg: Arpa plant modernised with a German brewing line (2019)](https://economist.kg/novosti/2019/09/30/zavod-arpa-modernizirovali-za-1-mln-ustanovili-nemeckuju-pivovarennuju-liniju/)
- [Abdysh-Ata: About the company (2026)](https://abdysh-ata.kg/about/)
- [Kaktus.media: Abdysh-Ata, not only a plant and a football club](https://kaktus.media/doc/470033_abdysh_ata_ne_tolko_zavod_i_fytbolnyy_klyb._chem_eshe_zanimaetsia_kompaniia.html)
- [Kaktus.media: From a tiny production to a huge plant (Abdysh-Ata)](https://kaktus.media/doc/368550_jivaia_istoriia:_ot_krohotnogo_proizvodstva_do_ogromnogo_zavoda.html)
- [Who is Who in Kyrgyzstan: Pivo Belovodskoe](https://who.ca-news.org/company:615)
- [Economist.kg: Baltika and Abdysh-Ata sign a cooperation agreement (2024)](https://economist.kg/biznes/2024/03/25/rossiiskii-pivovariennyi-ghighant-rasshiriaiet-prisutstviie-na-rynkie-kr/)
- [Economist.kg: Abdysh-Ata, production and projects (2026)](https://economist.kg/novosti-kompanii/2026/09/30/abdysh-ata-proizvodstvo-proekty/)
- [Global Voices: All-Woman Brewery Brings Craft Beer to Kyrgyzstan (2017)](https://globalvoices.org/2017/01/18/all-woman-brewery-brings-craft-beer-to-kyrgyzstan/)
- [24.kg: Record growth of alcohol production in 2024](https://24.kg/ekonomika/321123_v2024_godu_vkyirgyizstane_zafiksirovan_rekordnyiy_rost_proizvodstva_alkogolya/)
- [Kaktus.media: Kyrgyzstan increased beer imports (2025)](https://kaktus.media/doc/522565_kyrgyzstan_yvelichil_import_piva._cifry.html)
- [Kaktus.media: Kyrgyzstan continues to raise beer shipments to China (2025)](https://kaktus.media/doc/528630_kyrgyzstan_prodoljaet_yvelichivat_postavki_piva_v_kitay.html)
- [24.kg: Beer exports to Russia, first four months of 2026](https://24.kg/ekonomika/380778_zapervyie_chetyire_mesyatsa_kyirgyizstan_mnogokratno_uvelichil_obyem_eksporta_piva_vrf/)
- [Archontology: Kyrgyzstan](https://archontology.org/nations/kyrgyzstan/)
- [Wikipedia: Flag of Kyrgyzstan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Kyrgyzstan)
- [Wikipedia: Kyrgyzstan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrgyzstan)

## Breweries (5)

- [Kolos Brewing Company](https://dacaps.imcoll.com/brewery/2255.md) — 2 caps
- [ОсОО Абдыш-Ата](https://dacaps.imcoll.com/brewery/2246.md) — 4 caps, 2000–
- [ОАО Арпа](https://dacaps.imcoll.com/brewery/2248.md) — 2 caps, 1906–
- [ОАО Беловодское Пиво](https://dacaps.imcoll.com/brewery/2252.md) — 1 cap, 1914–
- [ОАО УСУ-Салкын пиво](https://dacaps.imcoll.com/brewery/2242.md) — 1 cap, 2002–