Until the 1930s all the beer drunk in Singapore came from abroad: Worthington from Britain, Carlsberg, the Japanese Sakura and Beck's of Bremen, sold in Malaya since 1893. A Straits Brewery was proposed in 1904 but never built. Beer was dear: in the 1930s a bottle cost about 20 cents, half the daily wage of a labourer.
Brewing began with Malayan Breweries Limited, founded on 15 April 1931 by the soda-water makers Fraser & Neave and the Dutch brewer Heineken. Its brewery on Alexandra Road brewed the first Tiger Beer on 1 October 1932. Tiger was launched with free beer and the slogan "Time for a Tiger", which Anthony Burgess took for the title of his novel of 1956, and within two years it was two thirds of the beer drunk in British Malaya. On 4 November 1933 a rival opened on the same road: the Archipelago Brewery Company, set up in Batavia in 1931 by the Wehry firm with Beck's, which brewed Anchor Beer, a pilsener of English hops and Australian malt, and ABC Stout. When the war came in 1939 its German managers left and the British took the brewery as enemy property; Malayan Breweries bought it in 1941.
Under the Japanese occupation of 1942-1945 both breweries were run for the Japanese. When malt ran short the brewers put in local rice and made a lighter Tiger Cub in smaller bottles, until full-strength Tiger came back in 1947. After the war British servicemen were the best customers - in 1951 beer was called the national drink of Malaya - and they took the taste of Tiger home with them. A canning line came in 1960. In the 1980s Fraser & Neave turned the city sites into property: a new brewery of a million hectolitres a year was built at Tuas, the last bottles were filled at Alexandra Road in September 1989, and in 1990 the company took the name Asia Pacific Breweries. The Anchorpoint mall and IKEA now stand on the Archipelago site; its brewmaster's house was kept for conservation in 1993.
In 2012 Heineken bought out Fraser & Neave after a contest with the Thai tycoon Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, and since 2013 the brewery has been wholly Heineken's; Tiger is now brewed in 11 countries. The Archipelago name came back on 24 July 2006 for the craft brewery of APB at Tuas, started by the American brewmaster Fal Allen with beers spiced with gula melaka, lemongrass and tamarind; it brewed 390,000 litres in 2016 and closed on 30 June 2024. Independent brewing began with brewpubs - Brewerkz in 1997, the German Paulaner Bräuhaus, RedDot BrewHouse in 2007 - and by 2020 there were more than fifteen microbreweries, among them Level33, Brewlander at Tuas, Alive Brewing and Sunbird. They pay an excise of 60 Singapore dollars on every litre of alcohol they brew, and craft beer is less than 2 per cent of the market.
On 24 March 2026 Heineken said it would end large-scale brewing in Singapore by 2027 and supply the country from its breweries in Malaysia and Vietnam. About 130 jobs go, and Tuas is to become a hub for logistics and new products with a pilot brewery; imported beer was already about half of what Singapore drinks. Small breweries still open: People People Brewing Co., with five tanks of 1,500 litres, started at Resorts World Sentosa on 15 April 2026.
