Top 10 Breweries in Brazil
Brazil is the world's third-largest beer market by volume and home to one of the liveliest craft scenes in the southern hemisphere. German and Italian immigration — concentrated in the southern states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Paraná — created a brewing tradition that predates the current craft movement by more than a century. The modern scene, which took off in the 2000s, builds on that heritage while borrowing from American, Belgian, and British brewing with real energy and originality.
1. Bodebrown, Curitiba, Paraná
Bodebrown is one of Brazil's most internationally acclaimed craft breweries. Led by Samuel Cavalcanti, it started in Curitiba in 2009 as a supplier of brewing ingredients and a homebrewing school, and grew into a production brewery with medals from national and international competitions. Perigosa, a big, super-hoppy imperial IPA, is the best-known beer, and it has spawned variants including a bourbon-barrel-aged imperial milk stout. The brewing school has trained a large share of Brazil's newer craft brewers, so Bodebrown's influence on the industry goes well beyond its own beers.
2. Wäls, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais
Wäls has been one of Brazil's most prominent craft producers since brothers José Felipe and Tiago Carneiro's family business started brewing in Belo Horizonte in 1999, with a range built around Belgian-influenced ales — the Dubbel and Quadruppel among them — alongside IPAs and lagers. Ambev (AB InBev) bought into the brewery in 2015, a deal that was controversial in the Brazilian craft community, though the Carneiro brothers stayed on to run it.
3. Way Beer, Pinhais, Paraná
Founded in 2010 and based in Pinhais, just outside Curitiba, Way Beer built its reputation on hop-forward IPAs and pale ales in the American mould, plus inventive fruit beers. It distributes nationally, has won awards including at the South Beer Cup, and has topped popular-vote rankings of Brazilian breweries on RateBeer. Way represents the generation of Brazilian brewers that moved beyond European-heritage styles to engage fully with contemporary American craft.
4. Colorado Brewery, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo
Opened in 1995, Colorado was one of Brazil's first small breweries and is one of its most distinctive, built on Brazilian ingredients — cassava (mandioca), rapadura (unrefined cane sugar), and regional honey and coffee — in otherwise familiar styles. Colorado Indica (an IPA with rapadura), Cauim (a pilsner-style beer made with cassava), and Vixnu (an imperial IPA, also with rapadura) are the best known. Ambev (AB InBev) bought Colorado in 2015, but the ingredient-led, "Brazilian school" identity has been kept, and the Ribeirão Preto brewery remains a draw for beer tourists in São Paulo state.
5. Cervejaria Bamberg, Votorantim, São Paulo
Founded in 2005 by brewer Alexandre Bazzo, who studied brewing in Germany, Bamberg is one of Brazil's most decorated German-style breweries, with well over a hundred national and international awards, and is known above all for its Rauchbier — the smoked style associated with Bamberg in Bavaria, whose name the brewery deliberately echoes (see our top 10 breweries in Germany for the originals). Its commitment to demanding styles such as smoked lager, doppelbock and weizenbock, in a market that could easily survive on easy-drinking lager, shows how deep craft ambition runs in Brazil.
6. Cervejaria Tupiniquim, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul
Tupiniquim has built its identity on boldness and a proudly Brazilian image — the name references the Tupiniquim people of Brazil's coast, and its logo is a blue macaw. The project dates from 2010 and its beer reached the market in 2014; it has since won best-brewery titles at the Brazilian Beer Festival and the South Beer Cup. It now runs a venue in Porto Alegre's Parque Harmonia and a newer brewery in Ivoti, and Porto Alegre's strong beer culture, close to the German immigrant heartland, gives it a demanding home audience.
7. Eisenbahn, Blumenau, Santa Catarina
Eisenbahn was launched in 2002 as a microbrewery in Blumenau, the heart of Santa Catarina's German-immigrant country and home of Brazil's biggest Oktoberfest, and its German-inspired range helped introduce a generation of Brazilians to specialty beer. It has long since left the craft fold: it was sold to Schincariol in 2008, which Kirin then bought, and it became part of Heineken Brasil when Heineken acquired Brasil Kirin in 2017. Production remains in Blumenau, and it is still a useful window onto the Blumenau–Joinville brewing corridor.
8. Opa Bier, Joinville, Santa Catarina
Joinville, one of Brazil's most German- and Swiss-influenced cities, had a brewery within a decade of its founding in 1851, and Opa Bier was set up to revive that tradition. Now around two decades old, it runs a large brewery in the city's northern industrial zone that offers factory tours, with a range spanning pilsner, premium lager and pale ale. It is a good anchor for Joinville's beer route, which links around a dozen local breweries.
9. DUM Cervejaria, Curitiba, Paraná
Curitiba's craft scene runs deeper than Bodebrown and Way. DUM, run by partners Murilo Foltran, Luiz Felipe Araujo and Julio Moutinho, is best known for Petroleum, a 12% imperial stout brewed with cocoa and oats whose recipe dates from 2010, when nothing of that strength was being brewed in Brazil. It has become one of the country's most celebrated stouts, and DUM's annual DUM Day festival is a fixture of the Curitiba beer calendar.
10. Hocus Pocus, Rio de Janeiro
Founded in 2014 by Rio homebrewers Pedro Butelli and Vinicius Kfuri, who had brewed weekly for two years before going pro, Hocus Pocus is one of Rio de Janeiro's most acclaimed craft breweries, producing IPAs, sours and experimental ales such as Interstellar. It has collected national awards, including best craft brewery in Brazil, and its Hocus Pocus DNA bar is a good place to drink the range fresh.
Explore on the map
Brazil's craft breweries are concentrated in the south (Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul) and in São Paulo state, but you will find them in every major city. Brazil isn't yet one of our map's country filters, but you can open the map to see where our data currently reaches.