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CHRONICLES

A Beer History Storyline

Main content

Beer History Storyline

Beer, Colonial Power, and Informal Brewing

Trace how enslavement, colonial concessions, liquor taxes, racial administration, and industrial supply systems reshaped household and informal brewing—and how brewers, workers, and drinkers preserved or contested those traditions.

Chronological milestones

Sources and further references are available on each individual event page.

  1. 1813

    Peter Hemings Takes Charge of Brewing and Malting at Monticello

  2. March 14, 1890

    La Fábrica de Cerveza de San Miguel Receives a Brewing Concession in Manila

  3. 1903

    The Germania Brewery Opens in Colonial Qingdao

  4. 1908

    Natal’s Native Beer Act Enables Municipal Beer Monopolies

  5. 1916

    Colonial Korea’s Liquor Tax Ordinance Restricts Home Brewing

  6. December 14, 1922

    Kenya Breweries Begins Production in Nairobi

  7. June 1929

    African Workers Boycott Durban’s Municipal Beer Halls

  8. June 1949

    Nigerian Brewery Produces Star Lager in Lagos

  9. June 17, 1959

    Women at Cato Manor Lead a Municipal Beer-Hall Boycott

  10. 1962

    Heinrich’s Chibuku Begins Brewing Opaque Sorghum Beer in Rhodesia

  11. 1981

    A Study Documents Women’s Commercial Sorghum-Beer Economy in Upper Volta

  12. January 1, 1988

    Nigeria’s Barley-Malt Import Ban Accelerates Sorghum Brewing Research

  13. 1995

    South Korea Ends the Crackdown on Alcohol Brewed for Household Use

  14. December 2001

    Nile Breweries Launches a Lager Built Around Ugandan Sorghum

  15. March 14, 2025

    South African Regulations Define Traditional African Beer