Region & History

Anyone looking to try craft beer from Patagonia will almost always end up in one of two places at the foot of the Andes: San Carlos de Bariloche on Lake Nahuel Huapi, or El Bolsón, a valley further south. Both towns only grew in the 20th century, and both owe their beer to immigrants from Central Europe.

In El Bolsón, a German named Otto Tipp is said to have settled in 1900, bringing a recipe with him. Around 1914, he opened a small beer factory there. Locals say he used to hoist a white flag over his house whenever a fresh batch was ready. Whether that's true can no longer be verified, but the story lives on to this day.

In Bariloche, a beer called "Parque Nacional" is considered the first craft-brewed beer in the area. Two German pioneers, Esteban Zufiaur and Juan Antonio Leberle, produced it starting in 1927. After that, things went quiet for decades. It wasn't until 1989 that Blest came along, the city's first new brewery. Julio Migoya and Nicolás Sillin started out brewing as a hobby, and after being laid off from the company INVAP, they built their own equipment.

Today, a dense scene of small breweries defines both towns. According to local tourism promotion, Bariloche has more breweries per capita than anywhere else in the country. No one can name an exact figure reliably, since businesses open and close every year.

There's no protected designation of origin for Patagonia beer. The EU register of protected beer names doesn't contain a single Argentine entry, and terms like "cerveza patagónica" are simply self-description by the brewers.