The Bahamas, a British colony until independence on 10 July 1973, brewed no beer of its own for most of its history. Beer came in from abroad, and by the mid-1980s market analysts counted the islands among the highest beer-drinking countries in the world without a brewery. Beck's led the market before the first national brand appeared.

The earliest local attempts did not last. Associated Bahamian Breweries, a subsidiary of E. P. Taylor's Canadian Breweries, closed in 1966, six years after its first bottle, and one of the first local brews, GoldStar, is remembered as a failure. Premier Sir Roland Symonette told the House of Assembly that the flavour was not to the taste of the people and that the government could do nothing about it.

Commonwealth Brewery Limited was incorporated on 17 November 1983, began trading at Clifton Pier, Nassau, in March 1987, and started with Guinness; Heineken was brewed there soon after. Until May 2010 it was owned 53 per cent by Heineken and 47 per cent by the Bahamian drinks group Associated Bahamian Distillers and Brewers. Its own beer, Kalik, came in 1988: Heineken designed it after studying the home market and named it for the cowbells of the Junkanoo festival. Kalik overtook Beck's, held about half the market by 2007, and gained Kalik Gold (1992), Kalik Light (1997), Kalik Lime (2010) and Kalik Radler (2014). In 2006 it made over two million cases, and exports grew from 5,000 cases in the first year to 90,000. Heineken agreed in November 2009 to buy out its partner; the deal took effect on 17 May 2010, on condition that a quarter of the shares be offered to the Bahamian public, and the company has been listed on the Bahamas International Securities Exchange since 24 May 2011, with Heineken holding about 75 per cent.

The second brewery came from Jimmy Sands, whose father Everette was a founding partner of the distributor Butler & Sands. He had a German-made plant, designed with Brewtech, set up on a 20-acre site on Queens Highway in Freeport, Grand Bahama, to use spring water under the Hawksbill Creek Agreement. The Bahamian Brewery & Beverage Company opened in December 2007 with Sands Beer, named in an island-wide contest, then Sands Light, High Rock Lager, Strong Back Stout and Bush Crack; its capacity was about 40,000 hectolitres a year. In December 2015 the firm took the Budweiser and Anheuser-Busch distribution from Commonwealth Brewery's Burns House, which had held it for four decades. Hurricane Dorian put more than a metre of water into the brewery in September 2019; production restarted on 28 September 2020 after a rebuild. In July 2023 ANSA McAL, the Trinidadian owner of Carib Brewery, announced that it had bought a stake, with the Freeport plant also to brew Carib beers.

Craft brewing began in downtown Nassau. Pirate Republic Brewing, founded by Stephen Holowesko in a 125-year-old warehouse on Woodes Rogers Walk, opened in 2015; its first beers were contract-brewed in Massachusetts, and all production was later moved to Nassau, where Island Pirate Ale became its best-known beer. Rip Ty'd Bahamian Craft Beer, a small brewery with a taproom on Dowdeswell Street, helped write the Craft Brewery Amendment to the Spirits and Beer Manufacture Act and makes beers with local fruit, such as the Eleuthera Pineapple Pilsner. Commonwealth Brewery earned a net profit of 6.27 million Bahamian dollars in the first half of 2026 on revenue of 65.7 million, which it put down to market share gains and tourism.