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Beer in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay: German brewers, Patagonian hops and two Argentine styles

Beer in the Southern Cone from Quilmes, CCU and FNC to Antares, Kunstmann and Mastra: German immigrant brewing, the hop valley of El Bolsón, the IPA Argenta, Valdivia's lost brewery and the craft brewers of Bariloche, Santiago and Montevideo.

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Two glasses of amber and hazy golden beer beside a basket of fresh hops on a terrace above a blue Patagonian lake and snowy peaks

German immigrants founded the first breweries of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, and the companies descended from them still lead the market. In each country a big group now brews most of the beer, and a craft scene has grown up beside it in the last thirty years.

Argentina

Otto Bemberg’s Quilmes opened near Buenos Aires on 31 October 1890 and grew into the country’s largest brewer; AB InBev has controlled it since 2006. With CCU Argentina, maker of Schneider and Imperial, it brews almost all of the country’s industrial beer.

Craft brewing started in Patagonia. El Bolsón brewed in the hop country of the Comarca Andina from the mid-1980s, Bariloche’s Blest from 1989, and Antares opened in Mar del Plata in 1998. The Bariloche scene peaked in 2017 with more than 20 breweries; local brewers said in October 2026 that its output had since fallen by more than a quarter. The country’s craft brewers’ chamber counted about 2,500 craft breweries in 2023, most of them small: seven in ten make under 10,000 litres a month.

More than 70% of Argentina’s hops grow around El Bolsón, where government technicians and local growers planted them in the late 1960s and early 1970s; Cascade covers half the area, next to Nugget and the Argentine-bred Mapuche. Craft brewers make about 3% of Argentine beer but buy about 30% of the harvest. In Bariloche, scientists at IPATEC found Saccharomyces eubayanus, a wild Patagonian yeast, and licensed it to Heineken.

Argentine home brewers gave the BJCP two local styles. The Dorada Pampeana is a golden ale born when home brewers could get only Pilsner malt, Cascade and dry yeast. The IPA Argenta, with wheat and Argentine hops, was defined in 2013 at meetings of Somos Cerveceros, a home brewers’ association founded in 2008; Kerze of San Luis has brewed one since then. In 2026 Astor Birra of La Plata was named Argentina’s brewery of the year.

Chile

German settlers arrived in southern Chile from the 1840s. Carlos Anwandter began brewing in Valdivia in 1851, and by 1914 his brewery made 25 million litres a year and shipped beer north from Corral. The family sold control to CCU in 1916, and the earthquake of 22 May 1960 destroyed the brewery. Austral has brewed in Punta Arenas since 1896. Kunstmann brought brewing back to Valdivia in the 1990s, and CCU now owns half of it.

CCU holds about 65% of the Chilean beer market, ahead of AB InBev’s Cervecería Chile. Independent craft brewers hold about 2%, double their share before the pandemic, from about 400 businesses. Kross and Szot started in the 2000s; LOA of Santiago now claims to lead by volume, and its Entrenubes was the world’s best Helles at the 2024 World Beer Awards. Tübinger’s Irish red ale was World’s Best Amber in 2025.

Uruguay

Uruguayan brewing began in Montevideo in 1866, and the breweries of the capital merged in 1933 as FNC, now part of AB InBev, with Pilsen, Patricia, Norteña and Zillertal. Uruguayans drink about 100 million litres a year. National brands fell from almost 90% of that in 2013 to 60% in 2023 as cheap cans came in from Argentina and Brazil, and in August 2026 FNC closed its Minas brewery for the second time in two years.

Craft beer came late. Mastra went on sale in October 2007, followed by Davok in January 2008 and Cabesas Bier in Tacuarembó. In 2020 the country’s craft breweries made about 2.5% of the beer sold, most of it in Montevideo, Canelones and Tacuarembó.

Sources

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  1. Beer in Argentina — Wikipedia
  2. Radiografía del mercado cervecero: del fenómeno artesanal sin distribuidores al auge del delivery — Forbes Argentina
  3. El Bolsón: por qué es la capital del lúpulo y el corazón de la cerveza argentina — Río Negro
  4. La generación del lúpulo: los Leibrech, la familia que en la Patagonia es una pieza clave para la cerveza artesanal — La Nación
  5. Historia de Somos Cerveceros — Somos Cerveceros
  6. X2. IPA Argenta — Beer Judge Certification Program
  7. X1. Dorada Pampeana — Beer Judge Certification Program
  8. Viaje al kilómetro cero de la cerveza: ciencia, aventura y gastronomía redefinen el perfil de Bariloche — Clarín
  9. Historia de la cerveza valdiviana — Familia Anwandter
  10. Cerveza de Chile — Wikipedia
  11. Ya son 398 actores: el auge de las cervecerías artesanales que suman 8 millones de litros producidos — GDA / El Mercurio
  12. El cierre de FNC en Minas y un mapa del mercado de cervezas en Uruguay — Teledoce
  13. Fábrica de cerveza uruguaya cerró planta por segunda vez en dos años: quiere concentrar su producción en Montevideo — Infobae
  14. Plan estratégico del sector cervecero artesanal 2021–2026 — AMAU
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