Top 10 Breweries in China
China produces more beer than any other country — around 35 billion litres in 2024 — and for most of the twentieth century that meant a handful of state-influenced brands making light lager for mass consumption. The craft movement that took root in Nanjing, Beijing and Shanghai in the late 2000s has grown quickly since, producing breweries with real technical ambition that engage with global craft styles while finding distinctly local voices. (For a neighbouring scene, see our top 10 breweries in Japan.)
1. Tsingtao Brewery, Qingdao, Shandong
Tsingtao was founded in 1903 by German and British settlers in the German-controlled port city of Qingdao (Tsingtao in Wade-Giles romanization) and represents China's most direct link to the European lager tradition. The colonial-era brewery, built with German technical expertise and long associated with spring water from nearby Mount Laoshan, produced a clean German-style lager that outlived German control of the city (which ended in 1914) and became China's best-known beer abroad. The original 1903 brewery building now houses the Tsingtao Beer Museum. The company was the first mainland Chinese firm to list in Hong Kong, in 1993, and today ranks among the largest brewers in the world by volume.
2. Snow Beer (CR Snow), Various Locations
Snow Beer, produced by China Resources Beer, has for years been reported as the world's best-selling beer brand by volume, almost all of it sold inside China. SABMiller once owned 49% of the business but sold that stake back to China Resources in 2016, and in 2018 Heineken agreed to take a 40% stake in CR Beer's holding company in exchange for licensing its brand in China. Brewed across dozens of provincial plants, Snow is a light, very low-bitterness lager built for food and for price-sensitive drinkers. It has nothing to do with craft ambition, but its sheer scale is the backdrop against which every Chinese craft brewery operates.
3. Jing-A Brewing, Beijing
Jing-A, named after the prefix on Beijing's first-generation car licence plates, was founded in 2012 by North American expats Kristian Li and Alex Acker, who started as homebrewers, and has grown into one of Beijing's most significant craft operations. Carlsberg bought a minority stake in 2019. Airpocalypse, a double IPA named in wry reference to Beijing's air pollution, Worker's Pale Ale, and a rotating range of styles have earned Jing-A recognition well beyond the expat community that formed its first customer base. Multiple taproom locations across Beijing have made it a fixture of the city's food and drink scene. Its engagement with Beijing culture — the names, the imagery, the local events — goes deeper than most expat-founded ventures, and the result feels genuinely of the city.
4. Boxing Cat Brewery, Shanghai
Boxing Cat, founded in 2008 by restaurateur Kelley Lee, partner Lee Tseng and American brewer Gary Heyne (who died in 2010), was one of the earliest significant craft operations in Shanghai, and its American-influenced ales were among the first of their kind available in mainland China. In 2017 AB InBev bought the brewery and took over its brewing and venues, so it is no longer independent.
5. Great Leap Brewing, Beijing
Great Leap, opened in October 2010 by American Carl Setzer and his wife Liu Fang, pioneered Beijing's hutong craft beer culture and was the city's first microbrewery to specialise in beers with Chinese ingredients. Honey Ma Gold, brewed with honey and Sichuan peppercorns, is its most popular beer — "the beer we started Great Leap to make", as Setzer has put it — and a good example of a brewery engaging with Chinese culinary tradition rather than copying American styles. The original courtyard brewpub at 6 Doujiao Hutong has since been joined by several more locations, including one in Chengdu, and a production brewery in Tianjin.
6. Slow Boat Brewery, Beijing
Slow Boat, founded in 2011 by Chandler Jurinka and Daniel Hebert as a pilot brewery in the hills outside Beijing (its first taproom opened on Dongsi Batiao in 2012), has built a reputation for consistent, well-executed approachable styles — American pale ales, session IPAs, and lagers that appeal to the broad Beijing expat and international visitor community without sacrificing quality. The multiple taproom locations across central Beijing make Slow Boat the most accessible craft beer experience in the city for visitors.
7. Master Gao (高大师), Nanjing, Jiangsu
Master Gao is one of China's most important Chinese-founded craft breweries. Gao Yan spent 14 years in New England, watching the American microbrewery boom, before returning to China and opening Master Gao in Nanjing in 2008, making it one of the very first Chinese craft breweries. Baby IPA and a Jasmine Tea Lager are its best-known beers, and Gao has also been an important advocate for the scene, organising homebrew competitions and writing one of the first Chinese-language books on homebrewing.
8. Panda Brew, Beijing
Founded by Pan Dinghao in 2013, Panda Brew was part of the first wave of Chinese-owned craft brands and claims the first bottled Chinese craft beer, its Oriental Red Honey Ale. It has since grown to several bars and distribution across dozens of Chinese cities, with accessible styles priced for regular local drinking. Its panda branding is more overtly commercial than Great Leap or Jing-A, but it has proven effective at reaching drinkers beyond the existing craft crowd.
9. NBeer (牛啤堂), Beijing
NBeer is an all-Chinese craft brewer whose flagship bar on Huguosi Dajie pours its own beers — sours and stouts among them, including an award-winning Beijing Gose brewed with coriander, salt and star anise — alongside a huge wall of imported cans and bottles. That dual role as producer and curator has made it an important discovery point for Chinese drinkers meeting craft beer for the first time.
10. Shanghai Love, Shanghai
Founded in 2016 and grown from homebrew beginnings, Shanghai Love was among the first locally made craft beers supplied to the city's bars and restaurants before opening its own taproom. It represents the younger generation of Shanghai brewers building on the foundations Boxing Cat laid. Shanghai's bar scene changes quickly, so check current opening hours before you visit.
Explore on the map
China's craft breweries are concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai, and a handful of other major cities, surrounded by the vast macro brewery production that defines the national market. Open the map to find craft brewery locations in whichever Chinese city you are visiting.