If someone with a good glass challenged themselves to drink a different brand of Brazilian beer a day – and only those officially registered – it would take 126 years to accomplish the task. Just over ten years ago, the same challenge could be accomplished in a few months.
What has changed since then? There was a “Big Bang” of craft beers in the country. Suddenly, in the mid-2010s, a whole new universe of fermented drinks began to emerge, with dozens of new types and hundreds of new flavors.
The Brazilian census of independent breweries from the Brazilian Craft Beer Association (Abracerva) shows that 86% of national microbreweries were founded as of 2015.
And the cosmos of craft drinks has expanded rapidly. Brazil went from 114 small beer manufacturers registered with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (Mapa) in 2010 to 1,847 last year. This is a growth of 1,520% – more than 16 times in 13 years. Today they represent a respectable annual turnover of R$1.6 billion.
Okay, craft beer has changed levels. However, after the initial enthusiasm for the new development has passed, the industry faces new challenges. The first is to gain more space at the Brazilian table in a market largely dominated by the sector’s giants. Abracerva data indicates that, even after all the growth, microbreweries only account for 2% of sales.
More than 45 thousand varieties
Three large groups still largely dominate our market. Ambev, Heineken and Petrópolis together account for 94.7% of beer sales in the country, according to data from Nielsen.
The remaining 3% goes to medium-sized breweries (Germania, to name a famous brand) and imported breweries. Even so, the little space left for microbreweries represents an increasingly diverse offer of products, flavors and accents. There are already 45,600 labels and 3,500 recipes registered by small factories (the mixture of formulas generates different varieties).
The flowering of craft beer marked the beginning of a change in the culture of this drink based on hops, malt and barley. Until the early 2000s, the world of Brazilian beer was a flat land, basically dominated by a single flavor, the pilsner type.
In the first years of the 21st century, Brazilian consumers began to discover a planet of varieties that became more rounded through imported brands. It was then that terms like IPA, weizenbier, pale ale, stout and porter began to become part of bar conversations, barbecues and parties throughout Brazil.
This was fertile ground for the emergence of a new local craft beer industry to compete with foreign bottles. Microbreweries have been eating at the edges of the market, but in fact, they really compete with imported brands. The public identifies them as part of a premium segment.
And statistics reinforce this perception. Brazilian beer imports have continued to decline since 2019. Last year, the volume of the drink brought from abroad reached the lowest level since the beginning of the 2000s.
Nationals beat foreigners
Imports fell 86.7% compared to the historical peak in 2018. In 2023, Brazil brought 7.13 million liters from other countries compared to 53.7 million liters six years ago. In terms of value, the drop reached 39.4% to a mere US$8.6 million.
The profusion of brands that emerged in the Big Bang is largely responsible for the collapse of foreign brands. And it also begins to establish a new beer culture. Many products have become attractions in their regions of origin. It’s almost like supporting a team from your hometown.
Data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock indicate that there are 771 cities in Brazil that have at least one brewery to call their own.
Piracicaba (SP), to cite one case, usually receives visitors attracted by the local Rota Cervejeira. The circuit includes visits to 12 craft breweries in the region, from the pioneer Cevada Pura, launched in 2001, to the award-winning Dama Bier, which reaches 14 Brazilian states.
Own microrevolution
Gilberto Tarantino, president of Abracerva and owner of a microbrewery that bears his surname, experienced the entire transition from the discovery of new flavors through imported brands to the shift in the national industry. “In the past, everyone only talked about water, that the taste depended on the water. But today consumers understand, for example, that there is a profusion of yeast. Malt can also have several different flavors, as can hops, which act as if they were the beer’s pepper.”
Tarantino says that, before creating his own brand, he had a beer importing company. “15 years ago there were no similar products in Brazil”, he explains. The reign of outside labels was short-lived. Small Brazilian producers quickly realized that they could create their own recipes for sophisticated varieties. “This change started about 12 years ago. The pioneers invested in aromas and flavors that were different from what was available in our market.”
That’s when Tarantino decided to brew his own beer. In 2018, it would set up a factory in São Paulo – which also houses a large bar, where customers can taste varieties such as Miracle IPA or Manga IPA, which contains fruit in its composition.
National identity
One of the biggest challenges facing the craft beer sector today is building a national identity. Tarantino highlights the potential for brewers to use Brazilian ingredients in the recipe.
The Brazilian market already has several examples of beers with fruits. Açaí appears, for example, in Sout Açaí, from Amazon Beer. The uvaia became an ingredient in Nativas Uvaia, from Burgman. Or even the jaboticaba from Saison Madureira, made by Brasiliana.
There is yet another way to bring Brazilianness to beers: using native wood barrels. This is the case of the Fresh Hops Umburana and Cumaru wood series, by Tarantino.
The president of Abracerva says there is still a third major aspect in the works: the use of a yeast derived from cassava. The association started a project in which 50 small Brazilian producers created their own recipes using the new ingredient.
Yeast is a type of microscopic fungus that ferments, that is, transforms the mixture of water, malt, hops and barley into beer. The Manipueira Selvagem project (name of the yeast extracted from cassava) uses this new catalyst to obtain a product with genuinely national roots.
Abracerva has been taking the “cassava beer” to international events and is preparing to export it.
Three business models
Gustavo Alves, owner of Köbes Emprium Bar and director of the Brazilian Association of Bars and Restaurants (Abrasel), is part of the team of microbrewers. He has been producing and selling IPAs, witbiers and lagers that have been branded in-house since 2019.
The expert explains that there are basically three business models in the craft beer segment. There are so-called “brewpubs”, that is, bars that manufacture and sell drinks on site. The most common way to enter the market, however, has been to set up a small industry and distribute production to bars, restaurants, emporiums and supermarkets in your region. “It’s a niche, not a high-volume business. The local public embraces the local label.”
There is also a format known as gypsy, in which the entrepreneur rents the idle moments of a third party’s factory to produce his own recipes.
A toast to online sales
The artisanal industry also benefited from the arrival of digital marketplaces, such as Mercado Livre and other retailers. “For minors, online platforms often serve them better than supermarkets. You can sell directly to bars, for example.”
Gustavo Alves explains that competing for the shelves of large supermarket chains is an almost impossible mission for small companies given the competition with giants in the sector. However, in digital, word-of-mouth marketing, or rather, throat-to-throat, can even go beyond regional borders.
Ecobier, from Socorro (SP), can be found in hundreds of establishments in four states in the South and Southeast. Coruja, which was born in Estrela (RS), but is currently produced in the city of Forquilhinha (SC), is also part of the group of microbreweries with supra-regional reach.
After the Big Bang, the Brazilian craft beer market entered a phase of greater recognition. But he’s still tiny. In the USA, where very low complexity yellow beers also reign, artisanal beers already account for 24.7% of sales. In other words: there is still a lot of ground for them to expand here.
