Beer in Chad is older than any brewery. In the south millet beer, bili-bili, is drunk mainly by non-Muslims; as elsewhere in Africa it is women's work, sold in yards and markets, while the Muslim north and the capital drink far less. The World Health Organization put Chad 42nd of 49 African countries in 2017, with 0.46 litres of pure alcohol per adult. Bili-bili, argué and djala are still the answer to every price rise of the bottled beer, and sachets of adulterated spirits, banned by law, have spread across the country.

Industrial brewing came late. In December 1958 SOBRAT, the Société des Brasseries du Tchad, was founded at Fort-Lamy by Roger Hugon of the Marseille group Cogébra with Jean Experton and William Tardrew, to build a brewery and cold store; it is still on the 1963 list of firms, but nothing found says it ever brewed. The brewery that opened was that of the Brasseries du Logone at Moundou, the main town of the south: created in 1965 with the technical help of Heineken (8 per cent) and 67 per cent held by Niger Français, a subsidiary of Unilever, it cost about a billion CFA francs. The company dates the opening and the first Gala to 1965; Libération (2016) has the first Gala brewed in 1964 and sold nationwide from 1965, and a Chadian paper gives 1 December 1964 for the start at Moundou.

Gala, nicknamed la fille de Moundou (Bit Moundou in Chadian Arabic), became the national beer and was rated one of the best in Central Africa. A second Logone brewery at N'Djamena, dated 1978, made half the Gala until the fighting of 1979, when it was damaged and never restarted; Moundou then supplied the whole country, with about 400 truck trips a year to the capital, and in 1998 made 120,000 hectolitres with some 300 staff. Castel came in through Boissons et Glacières du Tchad, set up at N'Djamena in 1971 to make soft drinks and sell Castel beer brought from Cameroon. When customs barriers fell, that beer took 40 per cent of the N'Djamena market in 1998 but only 7 per cent in the south, and Moundou answered in 1999 with Chari, for women and young city drinkers.

In April 2004 Heineken announced that it was leaving Chad and had agreed to sell Brasseries du Logone to Brasseries Internationales Holding, which controls Castel's beer interests. The Logone company and Castel's Chadian arm merged into the Brasseries du Tchad, BDT, that year (one directory says 2006); a large brewery was built at N'Djamena in 2005 (2006 in Libération) and began to brew Castel beer in Chad. Gala is still the flagship; the range also has 33 Export, Castel Beer, Beaufort Lager and Light (the first light beer brewed in Chad), Doppel Munich and Guinness under licence. BDT had about 500 staff on its two sites in 2016 and, local papers complain, no competitor.

The state's tax-exemption agreement with BDT, signed in 2015, was not renewed. Prices rose by more than 45 per cent in early 2020, wholesalers in the south struck for 36 days, and the Moundou plant stopped on 1 May 2020; it reopened on 6 July 2021 after an agreement with the state. In July 2022 beer vanished from N'Djamena bars for about two weeks, bar owners went to Kousseri in Cameroon to restock and a bottle rose from 850 to 1,000 or even 1,500 francs; prices rose again in January 2024, a Castel from 650 to 700. On 23 January 2025 the company became Boissons Rafraîchissantes du Tchad, keeping the initials BDT. No other brewery has been found.