Beer came to Jamaica with the Europeans and was imported for centuries; Spain settled the island in 1509 and England took it in 1655. In 1755 a writer recorded Kingston drinking three barrels of porter to celebrate a local election, and by the early 1800s porter was arriving from Bristol and Dublin. The first local porter brewer on record, R. Crang, worked at 34 King Street, Kingston, in 1875. Most drinkers bought 'draft porter', a cheap dark brew that soft-drink makers made from wet sugar and sold from casks and street hawkers at 1½ pence a glass.

Industrial brewing began with Desnoes & Geddes (D&G). Eugene Desnoes and Thomas Hargreaves Geddes merged their soda-water firms in 1918 and also sold imported liquor. They were selling Dragon stout by 1924 (sources give 1920 to 1961 for its start), and in 1927 they announced the Surrey Brewery in Kingston. The first Red Stripe, a heavy dark ale, was brewed in 1928; the light golden lager of today, made by Paul Geddes and Bill Martindale, dates from 1934 or 1938, depending on the source. In 1935 the governor warned London that the local beer was beating English imports; an excise tax followed in 1940. A modern plant at Hunt's Bay replaced the Surrey Brewery in 1958, D&G went public in 1970 and brewed Heineken under licence from 1973, and from 1976 to 2014 Charles Wells of Bedford brewed Red Stripe for Britain.

Foreign money followed. Guinness bought 51% of D&G for US$62 million in September 1993; in 1999 the company sold its soft-drinks arm to Pepsi-Cola Jamaica and its wine and spirits arm to Wray & Nephew, and in February 2001 it renamed itself Red Stripe Limited. Red Stripe had reached the United States in 1985, and in 2012 Diageo moved the US supply to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where it won little favour. On 6 October 2015 Heineken agreed to buy Diageo's 57.9% stake (reportedly US$421 million), bid for the rest, reached 95.76% in January 2016 and delisted D&G from the Jamaica Stock Exchange on 31 March 2016. Brewing for the US returned to Kingston, with the first container shipped in September 2016.

Challengers have rarely lasted. Big City Brewing, founded in Kingston in 1994, bought a downtown brewery in 1999 and made Real Rock lager, Lion Heart stout, Yardy Shandy and a ginger beer; it also bottled Lascelles' Kingston 62 lager from 2006 until the last order in October 2009. It folded after failing to win share from Red Stripe, and in early 2012 Roy D'Cambre bought its Pechon Street plant out of receivership (later Razz Breweries Jamaica). When that venture too went into receivership, RJ Rums and Spirits, run by Big City's former managing director Peter Wong, bought the site in 2020. It launched a sorrel beer in December 2021 and brought back its Royal Jamaican ginger beer, on sale since 2007, in January 2022 after a three-year break.

Craft brewing is new. Troubles Brewing (Craft Beer Company of Jamaica, incorporated in August 2020) sells five styles, and Cedric Blair, Red Stripe's managing director from 2012 to 2015, set up Clubhouse Brewery at the Constant Spring Golf Club in Kingston in 2021. In January 2026 the drinks group Wisynco opened the Devon H. Reynolds Brewery at its Lakes Pen complex in St Catherine; its Legend lager, dark lager and flavoured lagers have been on sale since late 2025, and its Mamba stout was only soft-launched after Hurricane Melissa struck on 28 October 2025. In December 2025 Red Stripe and Wray & Nephew gave community bars in St Elizabeth restart packs, and on 1 July 2026 Holly Bostock became Red Stripe's first woman managing director.