Georgian Beer: What to Order and Where to Drink It in Tbilisi

Georgia has about 8,000 years of winemaking behind it, and among Georgian drinks wine gets the toasts and chacha gets the stories. Beer gets no ceremony at all, which is the appeal: order it cold, drink it with lunch, and nobody expects a speech.

These are the big Georgian names on bottles, taps and fridge doors. The strengths and places come from each brewer's own site.

Brand	Brewer	Brewed at	Strength	Good to know
Natakhtari	EFES Georgia	Natakhtari, since 2005	5%	Malt, hops and water; bottles from 0.5 L to 2.35 L, plus kegs
Zedazeni	Georgian Beer Company	Saguramo, at the foot of Mount Zedazeni	5%	The company dates from 2011 and also makes a non-alcoholic Zedazeni
Argo	Argo Brewery Georgia	Lilo, in the Lochini ravine inside Tbilisi	4.8% (Argo White 4.4%)	The lager, a white beer and Black Argo, a dark beer

Natakhtari's maker started in 1991 as the small Lomisi Brewery in Akhalgori, on the Ksani river, and built the Natakhtari brewery in 2005 for the spring water there. EFES Breweries International bought all of it, and the company now calls itself the leader of the Georgian beer and lemonade market.

Zedazeni is the younger rival: the Georgian Beer Company was set up in 2011 and started building its brewery near Saguramo, at the foot of Mount Zedazeni, in May that year. Argo is the local one, brewed at Lilo on Tbilisi's eastern edge, and its own site calls Argo Lager a crystal clear amber lager.

The same firms fill the fridge next to the beer. Natakhtari and Zedazeni both make the pear, cream and bright green tarragon soda in the shop fridges, and Zedazeni's own product page lists patent blue V among the colourings behind that green. Kazbegi, the 4th big name, now puts only lemonade on its own site: saperavi, pear, tarragon, lemon, feijoa and cream.

Tbilisi's craft scene is small and mostly local, and the sours sit on the boards next to the IPAs. Hopa Taproom's own description promises 12 Georgian-made beers on draught, one reviewer notes they all come from Georgian micro and nano breweries, and another calls them nothing like the mainstream stuff in the hypermarkets.

• Sours: Megobrebi, the brewery behind Tsota Tsota, leads its own description with smoothie-style and mixed-fermentation sours, and the taproom's Instagram announced one in 2023 made with raspberry, redcurrant, banana and nuts.
• Wine ales: Megobrebi lists these too, a style that borrows from wine, which in Georgia is hardly a stretch.
• Tomato beer: one Tsota Tsota reviewer called it great in May 2026 and told the bar to promote it more.
• Fruit sours: at Optimist Craft Bar, one reviewer rates the mango sour and another the smoothie sour.
• Honey ale: 2 Tona, a brewery pub in Mukhiani, gets its honey ale named in 4 reviews.
• House lager: Rudeboy Bar's listing promises its own brewery, and one reviewer rates the house lager, though another found the house beer sold out.

7 of Tbilisi's 12 best craft beer bars are in the old town, close enough that 3 in a night is a walk. That makes them the easiest bars in town to string into a pub crawl without a taxi.

These 5 open between 12 PM and 7 PM and pour until 1 or 2 AM on most nights, about when the rest of Tbilisi's nightlife gets going. Treat a taproom as the first stop of the night, not the last.

Georgia's traditional beer isn't brewed in Tbilisi at all. In the mountains of eastern Georgia, villages brew a barley beer for their religious holidays, and in February 2025 it was registered as an appellation, Georgian Highland Traditional Beer.

The registration names 3 kinds: Tushetian, Pshav-Khevsurian and Ossetian beer. It's made from barley malt, hops, water and yeast kept back from the last brew, and the Tushetian and Pshav-Khevsurian beers come out at 4.7 to 5.5%, beige to brown and slightly bitter-sweet, with more malt than hops.

How aludi is brewed

1. Brewing starts 7 to 8 days before the day the beer will be drunk.
2. In Tusheti the brew is boiled in copper cauldrons over a big fire.
3. It ferments with yeast saved from the previous batch and is drinkable after 3 days.
4. It reaches its full flavour at 7 to 10 days, just in time for the feast.

It's a ritual drink first: the registration quotes an ethnographer saying it isn't meant for getting drunk on. Georgia's tourism administration names 6 areas that brew it, Khevsureti, Mtiuleti, Gudamakari, Pshavi, Khevi and Tusheti, and says every festive or mournful supra there came with beer. It also lists the tradition as an Intangible Cultural Monument of Georgia.

In summer, when the mountain holidays fall, the same source says aludi is served in village centres everywhere. It's brewed for the feast and drunk there, so don't expect it on a Tbilisi tap.

Beer in Tbilisi is a food drink, and the menus know it. These are the pairings that keep coming up.

• Khinkali: a cold draught lager with a plate you eat by hand from the top knot is the standard lunch, and a khinkali house on Baratashvili Street leads its own description with ice-cold draught beer, ahead of the dumplings.
• Sausages and brown bread: at an old-style beer counter the snack is a hot Vienna sausage with rye bread and sharp mustard, eaten standing up.
• Crayfish: one rooftop crayfish bar in Old Tbilisi pours Georgian craft beer and lager next to crayfish sold by the kilo, and a 2025 reviewer puts medium ones at 135 GEL a kilo.
• Grilled pork: pork shashlik and a beer is lunch at a canteen like Nikala's Yard, where one reviewer calls it the most delicious shashlik in Tbilisi.

What you pay for a beer depends far more on the room than on the beer, which says a lot about Tbilisi prices in general. These are the prices in 2026 reviews and listings.

Where you drink	What a beer cost	Going by
A Georgian canteen out of the centre	3 GEL	One reviewer at Nikala's Yard, June 2026
A dive bar in Old Tbilisi	5 GEL for a lager	One reviewer at Warszawa, June 2026
A standing beer and sausage counter	A 20 GEL note covered a beer, 4 sausages, bread and mustard	One reviewer at Old Time Sausage House, August 2026
A craft taproom	10 to 20 GEL a head, Google's price band	The Google listings of Hopa Taproom and Optimist Craft Bar
A hotel rooftop bar	20 GEL for a 0.33 L beer	One reviewer at Weather Report Sky Bar, September 2026

For a cheap lager in front of the football, the pubs with a screen are the place, and Warszawa keeps pouring until 4 AM. A hotel rooftop is where the maths turns, and the Weather Report reviewer was also asked for a 150 or 200 GEL deposit per person to sit at a table.