# Tajikistan

Country page of DA Caps, a collection of beer bottle caps. Web page: https://dacaps.imcoll.com/country/tj/info

- Official name: Republic of Tajikistan
- Local name: Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон
- Caps in the collection: 0 (https://dacaps.imcoll.com/country_caps/81)
- Brands: 0

## Beer in Tajikistan

Beer is a small and recent branch of drinking in Tajikistan, a mountainous, mostly Muslim country, and the sources found record no brewing in the region before the Soviet period. It came with the industrialisation of the 1930s: Asia-Plus reports that more than twenty large plants were built in the capital, then Stalinabad (now Dushanbe), in about ten years, among them a Pivzavod (brewery), and its history of the Dushanbe mechanical plant counts a brewery among the enterprises that went into service in 1939. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia also records, for 1975, a winery and a brewery at Sovetabad (since 1978 Ghafurov), near Khujand, a town of 17,800 people. Its article on the Tajik SSR names fruit canning, wine, vegetable oil, confectionery, meat, dairy, perfume and tobacco as the leading food industries, not beer.

Tajikistan became independent on 9 September 1991. By 2012 the Dushanbe Pivzavod was selling draught beer on its own premises in the centre of the capital: Eurasianet found half a litre of Dushanbinskoye there for US$0.40, in an article about the crowdsourced pintprice.com claim that Tajikistan had the cheapest lager in the world (29 pence a pint in Khujand). The writer called local beer flat and sugary and noted that Russian Baltika was everywhere. The Brookston Beer Bulletin of September 2012 counts seven breweries but names three, Kellers, Pivzavod Dushanbe and Sim-Sim, and quotes WHO figures of 0.39 litres of recorded alcohol a head, of which beer was 0.08 litres.

The brewery that is documented today is ZAO Tajam (Tacham in Russian), founded on 1 March 2003 at Khuvaydullaeva Street 2 in Dushanbe. Its brand Sim-Sim is the company's own, and the company site says it has added lines for soft drinks, lemonade and sweet corn sticks and rebuilt the brewing plant. Untappd lists eight Tajam beers, among them Sim-Sim Light, Svetloe (a pale lager of 4% to 4.8%, depending on the source), Filtered, Unfiltered and Dark, and the 4.5% lager Istiqlol; its check-ins run from Dushanbe to Khujand and up to October 2026. A travel guide calls Sim-Sim probably the most popular bottled beer in the shops and mentions a wheat beer at the company's bar. That beer yard opened on the brewery grounds in 2010 and serves beer straight from the plant's tanks. In February 2019 the company announced its participation in the Moscow Beviale drinks fair. Whether Tajam continues the Soviet-era Pivzavod is not documented in the sources found.

No independent craft brewery turned up: in 2026 BeerAdvocate lists only two places for the country, Sim-Sim Brewing Company and the Bundes Bar in Dushanbe, which has no beers on record. New capacity has been announced rather than reported open. On 25 April 2019 the Avesto group signed an agreement for a US$10 million plant for drinking water and alcoholic drinks, Siyoma, in Dushanbe, without naming beer. A government decree of 31 August 2022 allotted 6 hectares in the Varzob district to the company Alibobo i 40 K for a modern beer plant and a branded restaurant, and Asia-Plus could find no public information on the company.

Sources:
- [Sim-Sim (ZAO Tajam): company site, in Russian](http://sim-sim.tj/ru/)
- [Untappd: Tajam Brewery (Dushanbe)](https://untappd.com/w/d-d-d2d-d2d-deg-n-d-d-d-n-d1-d-d-deg-d2d-d-d-d-deg-n-d-deg-d-tajam-brewery/159168)
- [Untappd: Istiqlol, Tajam Brewery](https://untappd.com/b/pivovarennyj-zavod-tacham-tajam-brewery-istiqlol/1550124)
- [BeerAdvocate: Sim-Sim Brewing Company, Dushanbe](https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/39504/)
- [BeerAdvocate: Best Breweries in Tajikistan (2026)](https://www.beeradvocate.com/place/list/?c_id=TJ&s_id=0&brewery=Y)
- [Sim-Sim beer yard, Dushanbe: wedding-venue directory](https://dushanbe.wed-expert.com/profiles/sim-sim_6)
- [Brookston Beer Bulletin: Tajikstan Beer (2012)](https://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/tajikstan-beer/)
- [Eurasianet: Tajikistan: World's Cheapest Beer Comes at a Price (2012)](https://eurasianet.org/tajikistan-worlds-cheapest-beer-comes-at-a-price)
- [Saiga Tours: Central Asian Beers](https://saigatours.com/article/central-asian-beers)
- [Asia-Plus: Stalinabad in the 1930s (2024), in Russian](https://asiaplus.news/2024/10/19/gorod-kotoryj-planirovalsya-fantastom-kakim-byl-stalinabad-v-30-h-godah-proshlogo-veka/)
- [Asia-Plus: The history of the plant that is no more (2019), in Russian](https://www.asiaplustj.info/ru/news/tajikistan/society/20190727/istoriya-zavoda-kotorogo-net)
- [Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Sovetabad, in Russian](https://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/1/001/008/103/811.htm)
- [Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, in Russian](https://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/1/001/008/108/419.htm)
- [Wikipedia: Ghafurov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghafurov)
- [Asia-Plus: Siyoma water and alcoholic drinks plant (2019), in Russian](https://asiaplus.news/2019/04/26/v-dushanbe-postroyat-zavod-po-proizvodstvu-vody-i-alkogolnyh-napitkov-siyoma/)
- [Asia-Plus: Alibobo i 40 K to build a brewery and restaurant near Dushanbe (2022), in Russian](https://asiaplus.news/2022/09/28/alibobo-i-40-k-postroit-v-prigorode-dushanbe-pivzavod-i-restoran/)
- [OpenStreetMap: house 2, Khuvaydullaeva Street, Dushanbe (way 104635417)](https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/104635417)
- [Archontology: Tajikistan, Polity Style 1924-1991](https://archontology.org/nations/tajikistan/01_polity1.php)
- [Archontology: Tajikistan, Polity Style 1991-2026](https://archontology.org/nations/tajikistan/01_polity2.php)
- [Wikipedia: Flag of Tajikistan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Tajikistan)

## Breweries (1)

- [Tajam Brewery](https://dacaps.imcoll.com/brewery/7219.md) — 0 caps, 2003–