This site uses only functional cookies — no tracking, no advertising. How it works
Don't remember me
|
| 1542–1821 |  Viceroyalty of Peru (Virreinato del Perú): the Kingdom of Peru, created in 1542 by the New Laws of Charles I with Blasco Núñez Vela as its first viceroy and ruled from Lima; the viceroyalties of New Granada and the Río de la Plata took parts of it in the 18th century, and the royalist army held the highlands until the capitulation of Ayacucho on 9 December 1824 |
| 28 Jul 1821 | an open city council in Lima passed the act of independence on 15 July 1821 and independence was proclaimed in public on 28 July 1821; the name República Peruana dates from the constitution of 17 December 1822 and República del Perú from 28 July 1980, and the Spanish army held the highlands until the capitulation of Ayacucho on 9 December 1824 |
| 1821–1822 |  Perú, the first independent state: the act of independence of 15 July 1821, proclaimed in public on 28 July, under the Liberation Army of San Martín; the flag decreed on 21 October 1820, cut by its diagonals into white and red fields with a laurel wreath, a rising sun and mountains in the middle, was replaced in March 1822, and the name República Peruana comes with the constitution of 17 December 1822 |
| 1822–1980 |  Republic of Peru (República Peruana): from the constitution of 17 December 1822, with the vertical red, white and red flag of 31 May 1822, which carried the coat of arms from 25 February 1825 and lost it on the civil flag in 1950; Peru was split into the North-Peruvian and South-Peruvian states of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation in 1836-1838 and was restored by the city council of Lima on 23 August 1838 |
| 1980– | Republic of Peru (República del Perú): the name used from 28 July 1980 |
Beer in Peru is older than the Spanish. At Cerro Baúl in the south, archaeologists found a brewery of the Wari empire (600-1100 AD) where chicha, a light sour beer of pepper berries or maize, was brewed in large vats for feasts. Barley beer came with the republic: imports, above all from Britain, and German brewers in Lima and Callao. On 1 March 1852 a young German advertised in El Comercio as a man who "knew how to make beer", the city directory of 1864 lists eight beer makers, and by 1876 there were three breweries in Callao and one in Lima.
The oldest name is Pilsen Callao. A brewery in Callao, dated to 15 October 1863 and linked to the German Federico Bindels, passed in 1869 to the Alsatian Alois Kieffer; its beer won prizes in Lima in 1872 and 1876 and in Paris in 1878, and in 1902 it was sold to Peruvian and Italian investors and became the Compañía Nacional de Cerveza. In Lima the Americans Jacob Backus and Howard Johnston, who had come for the railway to Huancayo, opened an ice factory in the Rímac in 1876 and began to brew in 1879-1880; a British company was formed in London in 1889, Cristal was launched in 1922, and in 1954 Peruvian investors led by Ricardo Bentín Mujica moved the head office from London to Lima. In the south Ernesto Günther opened the Cervecería Alemana in Arequipa on 31 August 1898 and a brewery in Cusco in 1908; from them came Cervesur, the maker of Arequipeña and Cusqueña.
Backus grew by absorbing its rivals. It opened Cervecería San Juan in Pucallpa and Cervecería del Norte in Lambayeque in 1971 and the Ate plant in 1993. In 1994, after a spoiled batch hit its sales, the Compañía Nacional de Cerveza sold 62 per cent to Backus; in 1996 four companies merged into Unión de Cervecerías Peruanas Backus y Johnston, and in March 2000 Backus bought Cervesur for 164 million US dollars, after Cusqueña had won a third of the Lima market in November 1996. Bavaria of Colombia became the main shareholder in 2002, SABMiller took Bavaria in 2005, and since 2016 Backus has belonged to AB InBev. Challengers came and went: Brazil's AmBev announced a brewery of one million hectolitres at Huachipa in 2003, sold Brahma from 2004 or 2005, sold the plant to the Pepsi bottler cbc in 2018 and withdrew Brahma in 2021, while Ajegroup, the Kola Real company, built a 250,000-hectolitre brewery in Huachipa and launched Franca on 1 September 2007 at a 20 per cent discount.
Craft brewing is small. Forbes Perú dates the first craft brewery, Mamut, to 1997. Cervecería del Valle opened in the Sacred Valley in 2007, Barbarian grew out of a hobby of three school friends in 2009 and moved to a bigger plant in Huachipa in 2013, and Sierra Andina began in Huaraz in 2011; ZX Ventures of AB InBev bought Barbarian in August 2019. In 2021 there were said to be about 600 craft brands, up from 350 before the pandemic, yet craft beer was still under 0.5 per cent of the market, and about 0.25 per cent in 2025.
Backus has five brewing plants, in Lima (Ate), Arequipa, Cusco, Motupe and Pucallpa, and makes Cristal, Pilsen Callao, Cusqueña, Arequipeña and San Juan. In 2025 it launched Cusqueña Cero and, in October, Flying Fish, the first flavoured beer in Peru; by early November it had closed the sale of its San Mateo water brand to focus on beer, and expected beer volumes to grow after two flat years. In May 2026 the craft brewery 7 Vidas of Tacna won two bronze medals at the World Beer Cup, a record for a Latin American brewery.
