Skip to content
BeerCorp
Search

Ukrainian beer today: Obolon, Lviv's 1715 and a craft scene at war

Ukrainian beer from Obolon and Lvivske to Pravda and MOVA: who owns the big breweries, the oldest-brewery rivalry, brewing through the war and the beer that reaches the EU.

  • Published
  • 3 min read
A glass of golden lager, a cloudy wheat beer and a black stout on a café table by a window onto an old Lviv street

Ukraine’s biggest brewers are Obolon and the Ukrainian arms of Carlsberg and AB InBev, and its craft brewers kept brewing through the war. Some of that beer now reaches shops and bars in the EU.

Three big brewers

Obolon poured its first beer in Kyiv on 8 May 1980, built in time for the Moscow Olympics. Its staff leased the brewery in 1990, and in 1992 it became the first company privatised in independent Ukraine. It is still Ukrainian-owned. Carlsberg Ukraine owns breweries in Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia and Lviv, home of Lvivske, and AB InBev Efes Ukraine owns them in Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Mykolaiv. That last company is the joint venture of AB InBev and Anadolu Efes. In 2024 the partners agreed to split it, with AB InBev taking the Ukrainian side and Anadolu Efes the Russian, but Russia refused its approval in 2025.

Who was first

Two breweries claim to be Ukraine’s oldest. Lviv Brewery dates itself to 1715, when Jesuit monks built a brewery in the Klepariv suburb; Robert Doms bought it in 1863 and brought in steam power. Mykulynetskyi Brovar, near Ternopil, first appears in Austrian archives in 1698 but now gives 1497, from Polish records of beer sent to King John I Albert. It still makes its own malt and pasteurises none of its beer.

Ukraine’s best-known medal came in 2004, when the Radomyshl brewery’s Pshenychne Etalon won gold for weissbier at the World Beer Cup, ahead of two German breweries.

Brewing through the war

On 24 February 2022 the big breweries stopped. Missiles hit the Chernihiv brewery in March; it restarted that September, while AB InBev brewed Chernihivske in six other countries, among them Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, to raise money for relief. In Lviv, Pravda’s brewers finished the batch they had started and made more than 2,000 Molotov cocktails. On 8 March they launched #BrewForUkraine, sharing their recipes with breweries abroad. In Kherson, Drofa lived through the occupation, found its warehouse looted after the liberation, and still brews a few kilometres from the front line.

The trade company Ukrpyvo put 2025 output at 134.3 million decalitres, 79% of what Ukraine brewed in 2021.

Craft

Forbes Ukraine counts about 135 independent brewers, with about 3% of the market. In Forbes Ukraine’s 2026 ranking by volume, MOVA of Dnipro came third with 740,000 litres, and Tsypa, in the Carpathian village of Kvasy, fourth. Varvar in Kyiv, founded in 2015 by a brewer who left occupied Donetsk, ages beer in oak barrels and brews wild sours.

Into the EU

Ukraine exported USD 30.4 million of beer in 2024, according to OEC trade data, about 30% of it to EU countries, with Lithuania and Poland the largest EU buyers. The EU suspended duties on Ukrainian goods from June 2022 to June 2025, and an upgraded free trade deal took effect on 29 October 2025. In Germany, Obolon Svitle sells through Eastern European grocers such as Mix Markt, and Carlsberg Ukraine counts Germany, Poland and Czechia as its largest export markets for 2025. Among the craft brewers, MOVA sells in Denmark, Poland and the Netherlands, Opillia in Poland, Sweden, Czechia and Spain, and Varvar in Dutch and Swedish shops. Pravda pours its beer at its own bars in Lisbon.

Ukraine grows its own hops, too: Zhytomyr region has 75% of the country’s hop fields, and Ukrainian growers picked 390 tonnes in 2023.

Sources

Checked .

  1. Obolon (company) — Wikipedia
  2. Lviv Brewery (Львівська пивоварня) — Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine
  3. Mykulynetsky Brovar — Wikipedia
  4. 2004 World Beer Cup winners — Brewers Association
  5. Update on the transaction to acquire AB InBev's non-controlling interest in the JV — Anadolu Efes
  6. Chernihivske — Wikipedia
  7. Pravda Brewery invites the world to 'brew for Ukraine' — The Drinks Business
  8. Brewed millions of litres: Forbes names Ukraine's most successful craft breweries — business.org.ua
  9. Beer exports from Ukraine — Observatory of Economic Complexity
  10. EU trade relations with Ukraine — European Commission
  11. Zhytomyr region grows 75% of Ukraine's hops — Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine
On this page
On this page