Top 10 Breweries in Thailand
Thailand's alcohol regulations long made it one of the world's most challenging environments for craft brewing. From 2000, ministerial rules required a brewpub to produce at least 100,000 liters a year and to meet minimum capital requirements, while a full-scale brewery needed vastly more capacity, thresholds that shut out small-scale brewers. Thailand's craft scene grew up anyway: through illegal homebrewing, through "Thai" brands brewed under contract in Cambodia, Vietnam and Taiwan and imported back, and through a handful of licensed brewpubs. Reforms since late 2022 have begun to change that picture.
1. Boon Rawd and ThaiBev (Singha, Leo and Chang)
The macro Thai beer market is effectively a duopoly. Boon Rawd Brewery, founded in 1933, makes Singha and Leo, while ThaiBev (Thai Beverage) makes Chang. These are well-made industrial lagers calibrated to Thailand's hot climate and spicy food — crisp, light and consumed in quantity, often over ice. Understanding the Boon Rawd/ThaiBev duopoly is understanding why Thailand's craft movement faced such a commercially and legally difficult environment.
2. Chit Beer, Koh Kret (Nonthaburi)
Colonel Wichit "Chit" Saiklao, a Thai Army officer, is widely regarded as the godfather of modern Thai craft beer. He began brewing on Koh Kret, a small island in a bend of the Chao Phraya just north of Bangkok, and ran a brewing academy there that trained scores of homebrewers who went on to found their own brands. Chit has since opened Chit Terminal, a 40-tap bar a few minutes from the original island base, pouring his own beers and others from across Thailand.
3. Tawandang German Brewery, Bangkok
Opened in 1999 on Rama 3 Road, Tawandang is billed as Thailand's first microbrewery and remains one of its best-known licensed brewpubs. The cavernous beer hall follows German tradition, with long communal tables, copper brewing vessels and nightly stage shows, and its house dunkel and weizen are designed to go with a menu of spicy Thai food.
4. Full Moon Brewworks, Phuket
Full Moon Brewworks in Patong is Phuket's first craft brewery, a licensed brewpub founded by head brewer Sukij Thipatima. Its signature Chalawan Pale Ale, brewed with local touches such as brown rice and wild honey for a light, lychee-scented beer suited to the climate, became the first Thai beer to win gold at the World Beer Awards.
5. Devanom, Nonthaburi
Devanom was founded in 2014 by brothers Nattachai and Teerapat Ungsriwong in Nonthaburi. Like many Thai craft brands of its generation, it had its beer brewed in Cambodia and imported back. Devanom also makes mead and sato (Thai rice wine) and runs what was described as Thailand's first hop farm, giving it a distinctly local angle.
6. Mahanakhon, Bangkok
Mahanakhon takes its name from Krung Thep Maha Nakhon, the formal Thai name of Bangkok. Created by the team behind the Let The Boy Die craft beer bar, including partner Avi Yashaya, it was brewed abroad in Vietnam and Taiwan and imported back. Its Mahanakhon White Ale, a witbier, won at the World Beer Awards in 2017, and the brand was among the first Thai craft beers to reach 7-Eleven fridges. The same team later launched the cheaper Sivilai brand.
7. Stone Head, Bangkok
Stone Head is one of the best-known names of Thailand's contract-brewing era, producing Thai-designed craft beers at a brewery in Cambodia for sale back home. Its IPAs and pale ales, built on American and British craft conventions, are a regular sight in Bangkok's craft beer bars.
8. Outlaw Brewing, Loei
Outlaw began in 2015 in the northern province of Loei as an underground operation brewing in the back of an ice-cream shop. In 2018 founder Mike Roberts moved to contract brewing in Cambodia to make the brand legal, and its unfiltered, dry-hopped Mosaic IPA went on to reach around a thousand Bangkok 7-Eleven stores, probably the first true craft beer sold there.
9. Bootleg Brothers, Bangkok
A sign of the post-2022 era, Bootleg Brothers has brewed since 2022 in a corner of Escape, a tropical-themed rooftop bar in a luxury mall in Phrom Phong. It pours beers such as Peak A Brew IPA and Island Hopper pale lager, with occasional experiments like a roselle sour.
10. Call Me Papa, Nonthaburi
Call Me Papa opened in December 2022 in Nonthaburi, just north of Bangkok's city limits, an area that has become the heart of Thailand's new microbrewing movement. It is best known for hazy milkshake IPAs and shows how quickly small legal brewpubs have appeared since the rules changed.
The Regulatory Context
For two decades, Thailand's production minimums effectively made small-scale commercial brewing impossible, protecting the Boon Rawd and ThaiBev duopoly. Advocacy by brewers and politicians, including the Thai Craft Beer Association, produced change: a ministerial regulation that took effect in November 2022 scrapped the 100,000-liter minimum and the capital requirements for brewpubs and loosened limits on small breweries' equipment and staff. Brewpubs have since been allowed to distribute beer nationwide in approved kegs, and in 2025 parliament passed a community liquor bill that lets small producers and farmers' groups make and sell a wider range of alcoholic drinks, including bottled beer. Restrictions remain tighter than in most developed markets, but the gray market of the 2010s is steadily being replaced by legal local brewing.
Explore on the map
Thailand's craft breweries and brewpubs cluster in Bangkok and Nonthaburi, with outposts in Phuket and the provinces. Thailand is not yet plotted on our map, so use this list to plan your visit. For nearby scenes, see our guides to Vietnam and Singapore.