Before industrial beer, the fermented drink of the isthmus was chicha. The Guna call the strong kind inna and the Ngäbe dö kwaka, "bitter chicha"; it is made from sprouted maize sweetened with raspadura or sugar, while the common chicha of Panamanian Spanish is a fruit soft drink.
Beer came first as an import. Brewing at home begins with the republic of 1903: a group of businessmen, among them José Gabriel Duque, the founder of La Estrella, Ildefonso Preciado, Alberto de Obarrio, Jesse H. Hyal and Manuel Espinosa Batista, met to set up a brewery, and on 4 October 1909 the Panama Brewing and Refrigerating Company was formed to make beer and ice. Its first beer, Balboa, went on sale on 1 September 1910. The Atlantic Brewing and Refrigerating Company, led by Henry de Jan from 1926, launched Atlas in 1928, and the German businessman Florencio Herbruger promoted a third works in 1927, the Cervecería Alemana del Pacífico, with $100,000 of capital; its Milwaukee came out in 1929. In 1939 the three breweries merged into Cervecería Nacional S.A., with Rodolfo Herbruger as its first manager.
Cervecería Nacional added soft drinks in the 1930s (Canada Dry) and the Pepsi-Cola franchise in 1995. In 2001-02 it passed to Grupo Empresarial Bavaria of Colombia, which joined SABMiller in 2005; today it belongs to AB InBev and is the largest drinks company in the country. Its beers are Atlas, Atlas Golden Light (2015), Balboa, Balboa Ice (2014) and Malta Vigor, with Corona, Modelo and Budweiser from AB InBev. It has brewed on 100% solar power since 2021, from a farm at Pesé in Herrera, which it calls a first for Central America and the Caribbean. In 2025 it renewed Atlas as Atlas Golden, added Corona Cero and made a limited dark lager, Balboa Negra, for its 116th year; Balboa Dorada, a triple-filtered light beer, followed in May 2026.
The second large brewer grew up in the west. Cervecerías Barú-Panamá began in July 1959 in David, Chiriquí, with 24 workers and the beers Cristal and Panamá, and built its Panama City plant in 1971 (the company's account). In October 2002 Heineken and its Costa Rican partner FIFCO bid $56 million for the group: 52% belonged to Coca-Cola Panama, the rest was traded on the Panamanian stock exchange, and it ran two breweries, in Panama City and in David. In 2024, after an investment of more than $8 million, Heineken began brewing its own beer in the Panama City plant. In January 2026 Heineken closed its deal with FIFCO and took the remaining 25% of Heineken Panamá, as the company is now called.
Craft brewing is recent. Istmo Brew Pub opened in 2005 as the first brewpub of Panama City and La Rana Dorada followed in 2010; when the Micro Brew Fest first met in 2013, with 1,500 visitors, these were the only two microbreweries. In December 2013 Casa Bruja Brewing Co. opened in the Costa del Este industrial park as the first craft brewery to package and distribute its beer; it began with four styles and now makes more than 50 recipes, with over 40 medals, among them silver at the World Beer Cup in 2018 for its Gose Frambuesa. Cervecería Legítima and Cervecería Feroz (opened in 2019 at Ciudad del Saber) are the other names the press gives. One of Casa Bruja's founders put the number of breweries at about 35, though no association counts them. The festival drew 11,865 visitors in 2019, and Kirin's 2019 report ranked Panama 21st in the world for beer, at 78 litres per person a year.
