# El Salvador

Country page of DA Caps, a collection of beer bottle caps. Web page: https://dacaps.imcoll.info/country/sv/info

- Official name: Republic of El Salvador
- Local name: República de El Salvador
- Caps in the collection: 13 (https://dacaps.imcoll.info/country_caps/164)
- Brands: 11

## Beer in El Salvador

Beer in El Salvador is a twentieth-century industry. The first brewery, La Constancia, was founded in 1906 in the Santa Cruz quarter of Santa Ana, in the west of the country, on the initiative of Rafael Meza Ayau. It started with four brands, Perro, Abeja, Extracto de Malta and Pilsener, and Pilsener, with the ace of hearts on its label, became the national beer. Pilsener sponsored the national football team and gave its name to the top league's tournament from 1998 (the Copa Pilsener ran until 2010). The company's historic plant stands in the centre of San Salvador, at Avenida Independencia 526, next to what was the Bar Lutecia, an early café-bar of the capital's high society, whose furnishings are kept in the company museum.

For almost a hundred years La Constancia had no large rival, and its owners changed with the region's brewing groups. South African Breweries took a share in 2001 and, after it merged with Miller as SABMiller, control of Industrias La Constancia (ILC) in 2003 according to the competition authority, or in 2005 according to the company's own press. When AB InBev bought SABMiller in 2016, El Salvador's Superintendencia de Competencia approved the deal on 19 January 2017 on condition that ILC sell Regia Extra and the three presentations of Suprema, brands La Constancia had created more than fifty years earlier. AB InBev kept Pilsener and Golden and added Corona, Budweiser, Stella Artois, Modelo and the Honduran Brahva.

The buyer, in June 2018, was Cervecería Salvadoreña, a company set up in August 2017 by Salvadoran and Guatemalan investors, the first big brewing investment in the country since 1906; there were four bids. Regia and Suprema together held more than 11% of the market, and La Constancia went on brewing them for the new owner under a service contract, first to June 2024 and then, because of delays caused by the pandemic, for another 18 months. La Constancia answered the loss with Taurino, a 4.5% lager for the value segment launched on 3 August 2018, and with Santa Cruz 1906, a beer named after its birthplace and year, in April 2019.

Craft beer came in 2013. David Falkenstein, an electrical engineer who had spent 17 years in the United States, came home in 2009, taught himself brewing and with his partner Mariano Salazar, who gave the company its name from the folk legend of the Cadejo, a black dog with red eyes that guards drunks, opened Cadejo Brewing Company in the Zona Rosa of San Salvador. It began with 15 people and had 150 at the end of 2017, brewing about 30 varieties; its beer went to Guatemala through the distributor Alcazarén in February 2016 and its first container reached the United States in 2018. Smaller brewers such as SEB Brewing Co. in San Benito followed it.

In 2025-26 the old and the new brewing both made news. In June 2025 La Constancia reopened its brewery tour at the San Salvador plant, on Thursdays and Fridays, and in May 2026 it celebrated 120 years, with Pilsener, Golden and Corona the three most remembered beers in the country's top-of-mind survey; the company says all its beer has been brewed with renewable electricity since 2022. On 27 January 2026 its contract to brew Regia and Suprema ended, and Cervecería Salvadoreña took over production in its own plant at Ciudad Arce, a works of about 20 manzanas and more than 100,000 square metres of buildings, with a capacity of over 500,000 hectolitres a year, built for more than US$60 million and called by its owner the first big brewery to appear in the country in over a century.

Sources:
- [EyN Brand Lab: La Constancia, más de un siglo viviendo en la mente y el corazón de los salvadoreños (2026)](https://www.revistaeyn.com/eyn-brandlab/la-constancia-mas-de-un-siglo-viviendo-en-la-mente-y-el-corazon-de-los-salvadorenos-BB30643165)
- [El Salvador.com: Tour Cervecero de La Constancia (2025)](https://www.elsalvador.com/?p=1224239)
- [El Salvador.com: La Constancia reactiva su Tour Cervecero en su histórica planta (2025)](https://www.elsalvador.com/noticias/gente-y-empresas/industrias-la-constancia-cerveza-/1224282/2025/)
- [El Salvador.com: Los legendarios anuncios de Pilsener en los años 30, 40 y 50 (2025)](https://www.elsalvador.com/?p=1224285)
- [Wikipedia (es): Pilsener (El Salvador)](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilsener_(El_Salvador))
- [El Mundo: SC aprueba la venta de Industrias La Constancia a AB InBev (2017)](https://diario.elmundo.sv/economia/sc-aprueba-la-venta-de-industrias-la-constancia-a-la-cervecera-ab-inbev)
- [El Mundo: Cervecería Salvadoreña se alista para distribuir Regia y Suprema (2019)](https://diario.elmundo.sv/economia/cerveceria-salvadorena-se-alista-para-distribuir-cervezas-regia-y-suprema)
- [El Mundo: La Constancia concluye contrato de producción de Regia y Suprema (2026)](https://diario.elmundo.sv/economia/la-constancia-concluye-contrato-de-produccion-de-las-cervezas-regia-y-suprema)
- [Estrategia y Negocios: Cerveza Taurino, la nueva apuesta de AB InBev en El Salvador (2018)](https://www.revistaeyn.com/empresasymanagement/cerveza-taurino-la-nueva-apuesta-de-ab-inbev-en-el-salvador-EAEN1205908)
- [Estrategia y Negocios: AB InBev refuerza su estrategia con la cerveza Santa Cruz (2019)](https://www.revistaeyn.com/empresasymanagement/el-salvador-ab-inbev-refuerza-su-estrategia-con-la-cerveza-santa-cruz-GWEN1279395)
- [Estrategia y Negocios: Cervecería Salvadoreña impulsa una nueva etapa industrial (2026)](https://www.revistaeyn.com/eyn-brandlab/cerveceria-salvadorena-impulsa-una-nueva-etapa-industrial-en-el-salvador-con-una-inversion-que-ya-esta-en-operacion-IL30089089)
- [Estrategia y Negocios: Cadejo Brewing Company, los artesanos de la cerveza desde El Salvador (2018)](https://www.revistaeyn.com/empresasymanagement/cadejo-brewing-company-los-artesanos-de-la-cerveza-desde-el-salvador-KWEN1148130)
- [Estrategia y Negocios: Cerveza salvadoreña Cadejo llega a Guatemala (2016)](https://www.revistaeyn.com/portada/cerveza-salvadorena-cadejo-llega-a-guatemala-LBEN932832)
- [Paste: Exploring Central American Beer and Folklore with Cadejo Brewing (2018)](https://www.pastemagazine.com/drink/cadejo-brewing/a-look-at-cadejo-brewing)
- [El Salvador.com: SEB Brewing Co., cerveza artesanal en San Benito (2026)](https://www.elsalvador.com/?p=1236070)

## Breweries (2)

- [Cadejo Brewing Company](https://dacaps.imcoll.info/brewery/6401.md) — 4 caps, 2013–
- [Cerveceria La Constancia S.A. / BevCo Ltd](https://dacaps.imcoll.info/brewery/981.md) — 9 caps, 1906–