Beer reached Nicaragua from abroad. In the 1850s the Mosquito Coast, then a British protectorate, brewed beer at home, and English pale ale came in large ships from Manchester and Liverpool to Bluefields and Greytown (San Juan de Nicaragua). From 1877 tax exemptions and concessions on imported raw materials led to several breweries on the Pacific side, in León, Chinandega and Managua, but they did not last. In 1900 the market was supplied by imports, Elbschloss from Germany and Pabst from the United States, and in 1910 Nicaraguan merchants took the rights to Carta Blanca, Bohemio and Salvator of the Cuauhtémoc brewery in Mexico.

The modern industry began with the Compañía Cervecera de Nicaragua (CCN), founded in Managua by a group of Nicaraguan investors on 18 March 1926 (22 March in another account). Its first beer, Xolotlán, named after the lake of Managua in a newspaper vote, was brewed in 1929 and sold from 1930. By the 1930s the company made five beers: Xolotlán, Pilsener, Maltina, Munich and, from 1937, Carta Blanca. In 1942 the war limited imports of raw materials, Xolotlán was stopped, and Victoria was launched instead, on the market in 1943; it is still the oldest brand of the country. A brand-history site says CCN opened the first beer-canning plant in Central America in 1976.

In 1975 CCN bought the small La Campana distillery, a move against the Flor de Caña rum of the Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua, and the Licorera answered by founding Industrial Cervecera S.A. (ICSA). Its beer Toña, short for Antonia like the San Antonio sugar mill that makes Flor de Caña, came out in 1976-77 as the rival of Victoria. After the Sandinista revolution of July 1979 CCN was confiscated in the 1980s and passed to the state and its workers, while ICSA was not confiscated but shrank for lack of raw materials, so Victoria was the beer of that decade. CCN went back to its owners after 1990, the workers keeping a stake. After the beer war of the early 1990s the two companies agreed in 1994 to join forces; Wikipedia and the VLB date the merger to 1996, and the new plant replaced the old Victoria plant in 2003.

Toña was relaunched in 1998 and again with a new look in 2004, the year Brahva came in from Guatemala, and has grown since then to lead the market. It has been exported to the United States since 2001 or 2003, to Costa Rica since 2006, to Honduras since 2018 and to El Salvador since 2019. Victoria Frost, in 2008, was the first cold-microfiltered beer in the country, and in August 2020 Molson Coors licensed Miller Lite to CCN to brew for Nicaragua. About 99.7% of CCN belongs to Inversiones Cerveceras Centroamericanas; Nicaragua Brewing Holding holds 66.47% of CCN through it, and FIFCO of Costa Rica held 75% of that holding until Heineken closed its purchase of FIFCO's beverage business on 30 January 2026, which gives Heineken an indirect 49.85% of CCN under joint control.

Craft beer is small. Nicaragua Craft Beer Company in San Juan del Sur, started in 2013 by the Americans Matt Greenberg and Brendan DeBlois, opened its brewery and pub in late 2014. BeerAdvocate lists seven breweries in 2026: CCN (twice), that company, La Porteña in San Juan del Sur, Erdmann's in Ticuantepe, Moropotente in Dolores (Carazo) and Campo Brew Co. at Playa Santana. In March 2026 CCN reached its hundredth year; since 2025 its Toña range has included ready-to-drink micheladas.