The old drink of the Mongolian herders is airag, fermented mare's milk of about 3 per cent alcohol, which many distil further into a milk spirit of around 12 per cent. Industrial brewing came to Ulaanbaatar with APU, a state company whose name, Arkhi Pivo Undaa, means vodka, beer and drinks. APU dates itself to 1924, when the first distillery opened in the capital with 14 staff. Wikipedia places the first national brewery in 1927, built with the help of Czech specialists, and says its first beer was Borgio; Brauwelt calls the 1924 plant itself the country's first brewery, so the year of the first beer is not settled. Borgio is still brewed and is exported to Russia.

APU was long the only brewer. In 1992 it was the first big state company to be privatised and listed on the Mongolian Stock Exchange, with 51 per cent still held by the state; in 2001 the state sold the rest, the brewery was modernised in 2003, and by 2007 it could brew more than 200,000 hl a year. Beer was a small market: about 250,000 hl, or 10 litres a head, in 2005. Tiger from Singapore had been exported to Ulaanbaatar since the early 1990s, and the capital had two brewpubs, Khan Bräu, owned by the German Klaus Bader, and the Chinggis Beer brewery, whose brand said in 2026 that it had led Mongolian brewing for 29 years.

A second large brewery came from abroad. In November 2005 Asia Pacific Breweries (APB), the maker of Tiger, agreed with the MCS Group to build one in Mongolia; the joint venture, MCS-Asia Pacific Brewery LLC, was 55 per cent APB and 45 per cent MCS. The plant on Gachuurt Road in Ulaanbaatar went on stream in March 2007, cost about USD 20 million and could brew 120,000 hl a year. Its main brand is Sengur, a 4.8 per cent pilsener that Wikipedia calls the most popular beer in Mongolia. In 2010 APU took a USD 25 million loan from the EBRD to double its beer capacity, and in 2012 Heineken took over APB.

The two big brewers merged in 2017. In July APU agreed to join the Mongolian Beverage Company, the beer and vodka business that Heineken owned with MCS; Heineken put its Mongolian interests into a holding company that merged with APU JSC, and the deal closed on 30 November 2017 with Heineken keeping 25 per cent. The Shunkhlai Group holds the majority, 56 per cent in 2022. In the mid-2010s APU alone had about 52 per cent of the beer market; a 2022 newsletter gave the merged company 91 per cent. Its beers include Borgio, Golden Gobi, Niislel and Sengur, and in 2022 Golden Gobi was sold in Korea, Sengur in China and Borgio in Russia.

Independent brewing is small. BeerAdvocate lists nine places, among them Chinggis Beer, whose Original Draft was placed in all 21 provinces in May 2026, MB Beer Plus on Chinggis Avenue, Hops & Rocks Craft Pub, Gem International and Khan Bräu. Imports grew too: Pilsner Urquell has been sold in Ulaanbaatar since June 2019. The newest brewery is in Erdenet, the third city: the first Czech-built brewery in Mongolia opened in the last week of October 2023 for the investor Pamir Orgil with the Czech firm Contechin Group (EUR 750,000, four tanks of 1,000 litres, a 11 degree light and a 13 degree dark Pilsner-type beer), and the investor plans to sell its beer in some Ulaanbaatar venues.