Beer came to Vietnam with the French: the word bia is borrowed from the French bière, and the older drinks were fermented rice drinks, such as the rice beer of the Hà Nhì people in the north. The first lager brewery in the north was founded in Hanoi by Alfred Hommel, an Alsatian; the archives date its beginnings to 1892 (the company says 1890), and it reached industrial scale in 1902. It stood at today's 183 Hoàng Hoa Thám and brewed a bottom-fermented Pilsner-style lager in cooled tunnels. In the south the brothers Victor and Gabriel Larue began in Saigon with ice (the machinery arrived in 1886) and added beer and soft drinks; the label's "Depuis 1909" is the date that fits the first Larue beers, brewed in a large brewery in Cholon and nicknamed bia con cọp, "tiger beer", after the logo. SABECO's profile dates its roots to a small brewery opened by Victor Larue in 1875, but no source confirms that year.

In 1927 the Denis brothers' Brasserie et Glacière d'Indochine (BGI) absorbed Hommel and Larue and in 1938 bought Brasserie de Bohême (founded in Hanoi in 1930 by a former Hommel production head). Its 33 Export became the flagship, sold in over 80 countries by the 1980s. The Hanoi works stood abandoned by 1957 and were restored with Czechoslovak experts: the first test brew was on 1 May 1958 and on 15 August 1958 the Hanoi Brewery bottled the first Trúc Bạch. With East German help its capacity reached 30 million litres in 1983. In the south the BGI works were nationalised in 1975 with compensation, and the Saigon Beer Factory began at 187 Nguyễn Chí Thanh in 1977; its 333 Export, the answer to the 33 Export brand BGI kept abroad, became in 1985 the first Vietnamese beer in cans. Most beer then was bia hơi, fresh draught served at beer stations.

After the Đổi Mới reforms of 1986 foreign brewers came in. Heineken formed a joint venture with a Saigon state company (later part of the Saigon Trading Group, SATRA) in 1991, launched Tiger in 1993 and has brewed Heineken locally since 1994. Carlsberg arrived in 1993 with a joint venture in Hanoi (Halida) and in 1994 joined Hue Brewery, founded in 1990 with equipment from Danbrew and brewer of Huda. BGI, now in the Castel group, returned in 1994 with a US$43 million brewery at Mỹ Tho and the Larue brand, but sold its stake to Foster's in 1997; in August 2006 Foster's sold its breweries in Da Nang and Tien Giang to Asia Pacific Breweries (Heineken) for US$105 million, so Larue is now a Heineken brand. The state firms became SABECO and HABECO in 2003 and joint-stock companies in 2008, when Carlsberg took a stake in Habeco. In the sale of 2017-2018 Vietnam Beverage, a ThaiBev company, bought 53.59% of SABECO for about US$4.8 billion. In 2023 Heineken held 43% of the market, SABECO 33.9%, Carlsberg 9.2% and Habeco 7.5%.

Craft beer began in the mid-2010s: Platinum in Ho Chi Minh City was the first to launch commercially, Pasteur Street was set up in 2015, Heart of Darkness in 2016, East West Brewing and 7 Bridges (Da Nang) in 2017. London Drinker counted about 90 microbreweries with some 9% of the market, three quarters in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Beer sales fell from US$7.6 billion in 2019 to US$4.6 billion in 2021, and on 12 June 2024 Heineken suspended its Quang Nam brewery, open since 2007 and the smallest of its six. In June 2025 the National Assembly approved raising the excise tax on beer from 65% to 90% by 2031. On 26 August 2025 Carlsberg inaugurated the expanded Phú Bài brewery in Hue (50% more capacity, its largest in Asia). In March 2026 Habeco set a profit target for 2026 57% below 2025, and SABECO's revenue for 2025 was its lowest in four years.