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Brazilian beer: three giants, German roots and the Catharina Sour

Brazilian beer from Brahma, Skol and Itaipava to Colorado, Dádiva and Big Jack: the three groups that brew most of it, German immigrant brewing in the South, Amazonian ingredients, and Catharina Sour, the first Brazilian style.

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A glass of cold pale lager and a tulip of fruited sour beer beside passion fruit, pineapple, jabuticaba and cassava on a veranda table

Brazil drinks more beer than any country except China and the United States: about 15.3 billion litres in 2024. Three groups brew most of it. Ambev, part of AB InBev, makes Brahma, Skol and Antarctica and held about 59% of the market in early 2025; HEINEKEN Brasil held 24% and Grupo Petrópolis, maker of Itaipava, a little over 12%. Their everyday beer is a light pale lager close to the American lager, often brewed with adjuncts such as corn syrup; brewers sell the all-barley-malt kind as puro malte. Production fell 8.85% in 2025, to 15.69 billion litres.

German roots

Brewing in Brazil came with German immigrants, who opened the first breweries in the 1830s. Bohemia, first brewed in Petrópolis in 1853, is the oldest beer still made, and both Brahma and Antarctica date from 1888. The South kept the habit: Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul have the most breweries for their population, a federal law of 2017 named Blumenau the national beer capital, and its Oktoberfest, held since 1984, drew 680,072 visitors in October 2026.

Petrópolis has had a harder time than its rivals. It filed for judicial recovery in March 2023 with about R$4.2 billion of debt, and in September 2026 it was still under court supervision, paying creditors under its plan and losing money.

The craft brewers

Craft brewing started with brewpubs in the South in the 1990s. Eduardo Bier opened Dado Bier in Porto Alegre in 1995, and Colorado, Wäls, Baden Baden and Eisenbahn followed by 2002. The big groups bought most of them: Schincariol, now part of Heineken, took Baden Baden in 2007 and Eisenbahn in 2008, and Ambev took Wäls and Colorado in 2015. A new wave has taken over the medals. RateBeer named Way Beer the best brewery in Brazil in 2014 and Dádiva in 2019 and 2020, and Big Jack of Orleans won best brewery at the Concurso Brasileiro de Cervejas in 2025 and again in 2026, when the contest judged 2,700 beers. At the end of 2025 the agriculture ministry counted 1,954 registered breweries, a record, though only 0.3% more than a year before.

Brazilian brewers like to use what grows at home. Colorado puts rapadura, raw cane sugar, in its IPA, and cassava and Brazil nuts in other beers. Amazon Beer in Belém brews with açaí, cumaru seeds and bacuri. Ambev makes cassava beers such as Magnífica from crops grown on family farms, and Way Beer ages beer in barrels of amburana, a Brazilian wood.

The craft boom also brought Brazil’s worst beer disaster. In 2019 and 2020 a leaking tank at Backer in Belo Horizonte contaminated its beer with glycol, and ten people died.

Catharina Sour

Santa Catarina brewers gave Brazil its own style. In 2016 Liffey brewed Coroa Real, a tart wheat beer with pineapple and mint, and Cerveja Blumenau bottled the first, with peach; the state’s craft brewers spread the guidelines at a workshop that August. The Catharina Sour is light, cleanly soured and full of fresh fruit, often tropical. The BJCP listed it provisionally in 2018 and for good in 2021, and all six of its examples come from Santa Catarina, among them UNIKA’s tangerine version. At the 2026 Concurso it drew 98 entries, second only to IPA.

Sources

Checked .

  1. Anuário da Cerveja 2026 — Ministério da Agricultura e Pecuária
  2. Global Beer Consumption by Country in 2024 — Kirin Holdings
  3. Beer in Brazil — Wikipedia
  4. Cerveja no Brasil — Wikipedia
  5. Lei torna Blumenau a Capital Nacional da Cerveja — Agência Senado
  6. Oktoberfest Blumenau 2026 reúne mais de 680 mil visitantes e fica perto de novo recorde de público — Jornal de Pomerode
  7. X4. Catharina Sour — Beer Judge Certification Program
  8. Catharina Sour: 10 anos do primeiro estilo brasileiro de cervejas reconhecido em todo o mundo — Blog do Jaime
  9. Blumenau: os três melhores rótulos do Concurso Brasileiro de Cervejas são de estilos brasileiros — Revista da Cerveja
  10. Grupo Petrópolis: estratégia de preços no mercado cervejeiro em 2025 — FoodBiz
  11. Grupo Petrópolis, 41º relatório mensal de atividades — Zveiter Advogados
  12. Cerveja Magnífica — Wikipedia
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