Mauritius had no permanent settlers until 1638, when the Dutch East India Company, which had first landed in 1598, set up a garrison; it left in 1658, came back in 1666 and gave the island up in 1710. France took it in 1715 as Isle de France, and Britain captured it on 3 December 1810 and kept it under the Treaty of Paris of 1814. Mauritius became independent on 12 March 1968 and a republic on 12 March 1992. Sugar cane was the plantation crop and rum the local drink; one travel writer states that no beer was brewed on the island before 1961 and that all of it was imported under British rule, and none of the sources used here names an earlier brewery.

The beer business grew out of a soft-drink firm: Phoenix Camp Minerals was incorporated in 1931 and signed with Coca-Cola in 1953. Mauritius Breweries Ltd was created in 1960 (the same writer says 1961 and names the local businessmen Pierre Hugnin and the brewer Robert Ledoux as its founders) and built its brewery at Pont Fer in Phoenix, on the central plateau. Phoenix lager, 5 per cent, brewed from imported malted barley, was launched at the Champ de Mars on 26 August 1963; the company's heritage page dates the opening of the new works to 25 September 1963. Head brewer Roger Blasco had 40 people and a target of 35,000 hectolitres a year, and 30,000 were brewed in the first year. Stella Pils came in 1964, Guinness Foreign Extra Stout under licence in 1975, a first gold medal in 1981 and the 6 per cent Blue Marlin in 1989. The shares were listed on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius in 1993, and in 2003 Mauritius Breweries became Phoenix Beverages, which also brewed Warsteiner under licence from 2003 until about 2015. Phoenix Special Brew (2005), the Phoenix Fresh shandy (2008) and Gister Premium (2016) followed.

A second brewery stood at Nouvelle France in the south-east. Universal Breweries Ltd made Black Eagle lager and the 7 per cent Black Eagle Xtra there; L'Express says the plant shut in 2005, the Beer in Africa article on Wikipedia says 2008. In 2009 the French Castel group bought the idle plant, modernised it and restarted it as Stag Beverages, launched with Rs 500 million. Its beers were Stag, whose 50 cl bottle replaced the 65 cl one on 1 October 2012, and the cheaper Ti la Bière. In July 2012 Stag Beverages bought the bottler of Eski and Orangina, and its chief executive said he meant to lead the Mauritian beer market. The Beer in Africa article dates the end of the Stag brewery to 2014.

Craft beer began with the Lambic beer bar that Oscar Olsen opened in Port Louis in 2009. His Flying Dodo Brewing Company opened in the Mall of Mauritius at Bagatelle about three years later, the first microbrewery on the island (travel guides date it 2011 or 2012): the brewing is done in open view, a Bavarian brewer comes each year, a new beer is made almost every month, and the beers are neither filtered nor pasteurised. In March 2026 it announced the Mauritius Beer Research Institute, which tests cassava for part of the imported malt and combava for part of the hops. The Oxenham family, wine makers since 1932, started Oxenham Craft Brewery on the Saint-Jean motorway at Phoenix in 2019; the cousins Fabien and Cedric Oxenham and the Namibian master brewer Jörg Finkeldey make The Thirsty Fox in lager, pale ale, amber ale, weiss, IPA and stout. Phoenix Beverages answered in 2022 with Manawa, a craft brewery at Pont Fer under a South African brewer, with seven 1,000-litre tanks, four beers and Réunion as its only export market.

Phoenix is still the island's largest brewer. It marked 60 years of the lager in 2023 under the slogan Nou Pays. Nou Labière, and for the year to 30 June 2025 the group's revenue rose 10.1 per cent to MUR 13.40 billion, with domestic sales volumes up 8.2 per cent. On 1 July 2025 it completed the purchase of Diageo's 54.4 per cent of Seychelles Breweries.