Serbia has a reputation as a rakija country, and at a wedding or a slava that's fair. But walk into any kafana on an ordinary evening, or stand near a grill on a summer night, and the thing on the table is beer. Serbs drank an estimated 65.6 liters per person in 2024, a bit above the European average. The beer behind that number is a story of Habsburg brewers, a brewer who went on to run the national bank, a string of owners in nine years at one brewery, and a craft scene that grew out of a single Belgrade bar.
Beer Came With the Habsburgs
Beer is older here than most people assume. The first written mention is from the 15th century, when despot Stefan Lazarević served it at his court in Belgrade, brought in from neighboring Hungary. Real brewing on a larger scale came later and from the north. During the short Habsburg period in Belgrade between 1718 and 1739, German brewers settled in the city. When the Ottomans came back, they moved across the river to Zemun and Pančevo and kept supplying Belgrade from there. The Danas history of Serbian beer adds that in the 19th century beer was a drink of the better off in Serbia, not of the poor as in much of Europe.
The oldest date you'll hear belongs to Pančevo, a Danube town just northeast of Belgrade. On January 12, 1722 a brewer named Abraham Kepiš got a lease from the provincial administration, and the brewery opened on May 22 that year. The administration wasn't happy with the beer and took the lease away in 1725, so the first chapter was short. The brewery's real life began in 1847, when 21-year-old Ignjat Vajfert (Weifert), who had trained in brewing centers abroad, took it over. He modernized it, got it the status of a provincial factory, and raised output from 3,000 to 20,000 buckets a year.
His son Đorđe went further. In the early 1870s (construction began in 1872, and the steam brewery was running by 1873) he and his father built what is described as the first modern steam brewery in Belgrade, on the hill of Smutekovac near today's Mostar interchange. That's the plant that later became BIP, and it still stands on the same spot. Đorđe Vajfert is remembered for more than beer: he governed the National Bank of Serbia and became one of the richest men in the country. Pančevo is usually called the oldest brewery in the Balkans, and that rests on the 1722 date (Bečej, from 1754, and Apatin, from 1756, come next). The catch is that the brewery went bankrupt in 2008, and the old Vajfert complex is now closed to the public. In 2026 it was named one of the seven most endangered heritage sites in Europe, with roofs collapsing, so don't plan a trip around going inside.
Other towns followed the same pattern of one entrepreneur and one railway or river. Bečej is a good story: a German started a brewery there on the Tisa in 1754, the Gerber family ran it for four generations from 1806 to 1933, socialist Yugoslavia renamed it Partizanka in 1947, and it went bankrupt in 2007. The Jagodina brewery was set up in 1852 by Filip Stanković, a merchant close to Prince Miloš. In the south, the Niš brewery opened in 1884 as the city's first industrial company, founded by Jovan (born Josef) Apel, an Austro-Hungarian who had already run a hand brewery in Aleksinac. In Čelarevo the landowner Lazar Dunđerski founded one in 1892, and Zaječar's industrial production dates to 1895. After 1945 almost all of them were nationalized, merged and renamed, and most spent the socialist decades making one standard pale lager for their region.
The Big Lagers and Who Owns Them
Almost every Serbian brewery you can name today is part of a foreign group, and the ownership changes after 2000 are the reason. According to the Serbian brewers' association, three companies hold 96 percent of the market: Heineken, Carlsberg and Apatinska pivara, which belongs to Molson Coors. They made about 5.7 million hectoliters in 2024. The same report says sales are shrinking, consumers are spending less, and Apatinska pivara ended 2025 with a net loss of about 103 million dinars.
Start with Apatin, the biggest. It was founded in 1756 as an imperial brewery, privatized into the Interbrew network in 2003, became part of Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2008, joined the regional group StarBev in 2009, and went to Molson Coors when that company bought StarBev in 2012. Its flagship is Jelen ("deer"), a pale lager of 4.6 percent with a bugling red stag on the label. The brewery also makes Apatinsko and fills licensed brands such as Staropramen.
Carlsberg Srbija brews in Čelarevo on the old Dunđerski site and took over the majority there in 2003. Its star is Lav ("lion"), at 4.5 percent, with a 7 percent Lav 7 for people who want more. Lav has been brewed there since the 1980s and for years has been Jelen's closest rival. Heineken got its foothold in 2007 by buying the Novi Sad brewery MB, then in 2008 took 72 percent of Efes Srbija, which owned Zaječar and Pančevo. Today it runs two plants, in Novi Sad and in Zaječar, and Zaječarsko has long been counted among the country's most popular brands.
What do they taste like? Honestly, alike. These are clean, light, lightly bitter pale lagers meant to be cold and drunk in quantity, much closer to Czech or German pilsner-style beer than to anything dark or hoppy. Ask three Serbs which is best and you'll get three firm answers. Smaller regional names hold on too, like Niško from the south, whose brewery got a new Serbian owner in 2026, and dark lagers such as Zaječarsko crno are easy to find if you'd rather not drink pale.
Why Vojvodina Is Beer Country
Look at where the oldest breweries sit and a pattern appears: Apatin on the Danube, Bečej on the Tisa, Čelarevo on the Danube, Pančevo where the Tamiš meets it. Vojvodina is flat black-soil farmland that was part of the Habsburg monarchy until 1918, settled by German, Hungarian and Slovak farmers who knew how to brew, with grain, river transport and a market of towns that wanted beer. Barley grows well beyond Vojvodina, as the field pictured in Mačva shows, and Jagodina's history gives the logic plainly: barley nearby and good well water, with only hops imported. In Vojvodina even that stopped being true.
Hops are the plant that gives beer its bitterness, and Vojvodina grew them for centuries. Count András Hadik planted the first hop fields near Futog in 1770. In 1885 a Slovak teacher, Albert Marčiš, got seedlings from a Czech grower and started recommending them to everyone, and within a short time the area around Bački Petrovac became the center of hop growing for Hungary and Vojvodina. The boom peaked after World War I: by 1927 there were 8,097 hectares under hops in Vojvodina, and a hop-growing school opened in Petrovac.
You can read the rest of the map from the brands. Apatin and Čelarevo are the Vojvodina giants, Novi Sad has the Heineken plant, Zaječar is Heineken's eastern plant, and Niš still brews for the south. The ownership is Dutch, Danish and American. The loyalty is still local.
The Craft Wave
Craft beer arrived late, and fast. A bar called Samo Pivo is usually credited as the start of Belgrade's scene, and one of the best-known names today is Kabinet, founded in 2014 in the village of Nemenikuće under Kosmaj, south of Belgrade. It brews on its own land, makes everything from hazy IPAs to a tomato gose, and sells at a lounge with meadow seating that, according to its site, opens Friday to Sunday from noon to 8 pm. Its webshop prices most beers between 250 and 470 dinars, which is roughly two to four euros.
A few others have a track record. The Black Turtle (Kornjača) opened its first pub in 2000 and began brewing around ten years later, and Salto in Rakovica started in 2015, with no pub of its own but, as of a 2020 guide, beer in more than 350 venues. And Dogma, started in 2016, has a taproom at Radnička 3, in the old sugar refinery near the Sava, plus a bar at Makedonska 7 in the center, and still posts new releases in 2026. In Novi Sad, 3Bir has brewed since 2016 and has a taproom; check its hours first. Pivoslavija's map lists dozens of craft bars and brewpubs near Trg Republike.
The numbers explain both the excitement and the worry. In 2017 there were more than 20 small breweries and craft was around 2.5 percent of the market, up from under 1 percent two years earlier. By June 2026 the small brewers' association estimated about 66 craft breweries, still selling mostly through bars and restaurants, and its president said sales are falling because people have less money to spend. Places close, so check before you travel for one.
What do they brew? The usual craft styles: IPA, pale ale, wheat, stout, sours and fruit beers. If you try only one thing, make it a local IPA or a dark ale next to a classic lager. The contrast is what the whole story is about.
Beer and Serbian Food
Serbian beer makes the most sense at the table, and the table is mostly about the grill. The core of roštilj is ćevapi, small grilled minced-meat fingers served in a flatbread called lepinja with chopped onion and often kajmak, a salty clotted cream, and pljeskavica, a bigger spiced patty of pork, beef and lamb. Salt, fat, smoke and onion are exactly what a cold, light, bitter lager is built for. It cuts through the kajmak and resets your mouth between bites. That's the logic of the whole system, and why nobody orders a heavy IPA with ćevapi. The famous spicy version, the Leskovac pljeskavica, belongs to the south, and our guide to 5 days in Niš is a good place to start for it.
The other half of the pairing is the kafana, the local tavern that began as a coffeehouse and today serves food and alcohol and often has live music. The food is cheese, cured meat, grilled sausages or bean stew, and the drinks tend to run beer first, then wine or rakija as the evening goes on. For stews and sausages in the colder months, a dark lager like Zaječarsko crno works better than the pale one. Craft beer fits another table: a sour or a wheat beer with salad and grilled vegetables, an amber ale with sausages, and an IPA with spicy dishes. These are my opinions, not rules, and the people pouring will tell you theirs.
How to Drink Beer in Serbia
Ordering is easy. Say "pivo" and name the brand. In a bar the choice is usually between "točeno", which is draught, and a bottle, "flaša", in 0.33 or 0.5 liter sizes; the 0.5 liter returnable bottle is the Serbian standard at home, and bottle deposits are still normal in shops. Toast with "živeli". Prices swing a lot between a kafana in a small town and a craft bar in Belgrade, so look at the menu before you sit down. Under the consumer protection law, selling or serving alcohol, beer included, to anyone under 18 is banned, so carry ID if you look young.
Festivals are the other way in. The Belgrade Beer Fest started in 2003 under the Kalemegdan fortress and was free to enter until 2023. The organizers called the 2025 edition the 22nd. It was held at Ušće in New Belgrade on August 28 to 30, with ticketed days that included beer. The 2024 edition was in June, so the dates move, and when this was checked the official site still showed 2025 as the latest edition. Check it for 2026 before you plan around it. It's a big music festival with beer, not a craft event. A smaller, older one is Dani piva (Beer Days) in Zrenjanin, which was announced for August 5 to 9 in 2026, its 41st edition. For craft, go to a brewery taproom.
Where to Go Next
The best way to drink Serbian beer is to follow its geography: a lager in Belgrade's kafane, a walk around Pančevo to see where it started (from the outside, the old brewery is closed), a pilgrimage to Kosmaj for the craft side, and a grill in the south to see how beer meets meat. Our Serbia country page has the wider map, and 5 days in Belgrade covers the city's kafane and bars. If you want to see how Serbia compares with the rest of the world, read where to drink the best beer in the world.
