Beer is old in Portugal: the Greek geographer Strabo wrote that the Lusitanians drank water and a barley beer and kept wine for feasts. Wine later took over, and from the 15th and 16th centuries customs records show beer coming in from northern Europe, drunk mostly by foreigners in the port towns. A Beer Patio (Pátio da Serveja) is named in Lisbon in 1680, a complaint to King Pedro II in 1689 suggests that beer was already made locally and seen as a rival to wine, and in 1710 João V banned the import of foreign beer, wine and spirits. English beer, then German, French and Spanish, came back to the ports in the late 18th century.
The first breweries were small and French-run: Claude Sauvinat's Real Fábrica de Cerveja e Genebra do Vale do Pereiro, which the Central de Cervejas timeline calls the first, and Jacques Maillard's in Rua Flor da Murta, Lisbon; by 1801 Porto had seven beer and soft-drink works that mostly sold bottled English beer. The Fábrica de Cerveja da Trindade was set up in Lisbon in 1836 and the Jansen brewery followed in 1870. In 1872 the Briton Henry Price Miles began brewing in Madeira, the root of Empresa de Cervejas da Madeira, and in 1893 the Melo Abreu brewery opened at Ponta Delgada. In Porto seven factories joined on 7 March 1890 as Companhia União Fabril Portuense (CUFP), which sold Cristal from 1903 and registered Super Bock in 1927.
In 1934 Sociedade Central de Cervejas (SCC) was formed to sell the beers of four companies, Portugália, Estrela, Coimbra and Jansen, and Trindade joined it in 1935. Sagres appeared in 1940, for the Portuguese World Exhibition, and Imperial in 1941. CUFP opened a new factory at Leça do Balio in 1964 and SCC one at Vialonga in 1968. A Portuguese drank 1 litre of beer a year in 1935 and 4.6 litres in 1960. CUFP was nationalised on 30 August 1975, and in 1977 the industry was put into two companies: Unicer (CUFP, Copeja, Imperial and Rical) and Centralcer (SCC and Cergal, formed in 1972). Unicer was privatised in 1989-1990 and Centralcer in 1990, and in 1989 beer overtook wine in consumption.
Unicer began to brew Carlsberg in 1992. Scottish & Newcastle took 49% of SCC in 2000 and all of it in 2003; Heineken took it over on 29 April 2008. Unicer, renamed Super Bock Group on 10 November 2017, concentrated all brewing at Leça do Balio, where a €100 million plant opened in 2014-2015, and Carlsberg raised its holding to about 60% in December 2018. The two groups hold over 90% of the market. Font Salem, a subsidiary of Damm, bought the insolvent Drinkin brewery at Santarém, built by José Sousa Cintra, at auction in 2009 for €15.5 million; it brews mostly for supermarkets, and the Damm group bought the Tagus brand from Sumol in 2012 for €2.6 million.
Craft beer began in 2011 with Sovina in Porto, when the country had seven microbreweries; there were 35 in 2014, 64 in 2015 and over 100 by 2021. Lisbon's Marvila became a beer quarter around Dois Corvos (2015), Lince and Musa (2016); Lince has since closed. Others are Letra (Vila Verde, 2013), Vadia, Nortada (Porto, 2017; Hijos de Rivera, the Estrella Galicia brewer, bought 48.94% in 2019), Quinas (2018) and Praxis in Coimbra, which took over the old Topázio and Onyx brands in 2021. Central de Cervejas started its own craft arm, Hoppy House, in 2018. In 2023 Portugal drank 6.2 million hl (60 litres a head) and brewed 7.55 million hl, exporting 1.5 million. In February 2025 Super Bock Group announced €200 million of investment to 2030, in October 2025 Central de Cervejas put its decarbonisation spending at €135 million since 2017, and in 2026 Praxis won a World Beer Awards world title for a grape ale.
