Beer is old in the Duchy. The monks of Neimënster (Münster) Abbey in the Grund quarter of Luxembourg City are thought to have brewed from about 1300, and brewing went on in the Grund for centuries: in 1764 one of the breweries in Rue Plaetis became the Funck brewery, which was Funck-Bricher from 1862 and supplier to the court from 1916. In Diekirch the Recollect monks made a beer known in the 18th century. The steel industry of the south brought workers and thirst: Bofferding was founded in Bascharage in 1842 (the official permit is dated 1844), and Brasserie Battin followed in Esch-sur-Alzette in 1937. In Clausen Michel Mousel bought a brewery in 1825; it is often said that brewing on the Mousel site goes back to 1511, but no source confirms it and the family's own history begins in 1825. Brasserie Simon in Wiltz dates itself to 1824 and has been in the Simon family since the auction of 1890.

Diekirch began in 1871 as a joint-stock company, bought land by the station in 1880, was the largest brewery in the country by 1900 and in 1930 built a plant next to the station that is called the first industrial brewery in Luxembourg. Mousel grew by buying others: Funck-Nouveau in Pfaffenthal (1914), Eich (1951), Gruber in Wiltz (1956) and Esch (1969), and in 1971 it merged with the Clausen brewery. Funck-Bricher bought the Dudelange brewery in 1964. In the 1950s the country had about twelve breweries; three large ones are left.

Three mergers made them. In 1975 Bofferding and Funck-Bricher became Brasserie Nationale: the Grund brewery closed and all beer was brewed and sold as Bofferding at Bascharage. In 2000 Diekirch and Mousel merged as Brasserie de Luxembourg Mousel-Diekirch, Mousel left Clausen for Diekirch and in 2002 the company joined Interbrew, now AB InBev. In 2004 Brasserie Nationale bought Battin, brewed it at Bascharage from 2005, and the Esch brewery was pulled down in 2008. The country drank 346,000 hl in 2008, 97 litres a head, and 83.4 litres in 2012, when its seven breweries made 293,000 hl and 192,000 hl came from abroad. In 2021 imports had 55% of sales, Brasserie Nationale 26% and Brasserie de Luxembourg 11%, of 225,180 hl brewed in the country. Lager is over 95% of what is drunk.

The craft breweries began with Clausel. Brewing on the Mousel site had stood idle for seven years when a new brewhouse arrived in May 2007 and the first mash went in on 12 July 2007. Brewpubs and microbreweries followed: Béierhaascht in Bascharage, Den Heischter in Heiderscheid, the Echternacher Brauerei, Bare Brewing in Differdange and Twisted Cat, which grew from home brewing into a brewpub in Dudelange. About a dozen opened in ten years, and Bouneweger, Stuff, Nowhere and Grand Brewing have closed. Brasserie Simon, run by Betty Fontaine since 2003, brews Simon, Ourdaller and Okult, and the first beer museum in the country stands in Wiltz castle.

Funck-Bricher came back in 2018 as an organic beer, and Diekirch opened a new €25 million brewery in 2019. On 24 April 2025 Brasserie Nationale announced a €3.72 million filtration unit at Bascharage, to be ready by early spring 2026, which should use half the water of the old one. Since May 2026 Bofferding has been on sale in London, in cans.