Heineken

Heineken began in Amsterdam in 1864, when Gerard Adriaan Heineken, aged 22, took over the De Hooiberg ("The Haystack") brewery in the city centre, bought with an inheritance from his father. The beer bearing the Heineken name came later: in 1873 the business became the company Heineken's Bierbrouwerij Maatschappij and switched to brewing only Bavarian-style, bottom-fermented beer — which is why both dates appear in the brand's history. That same year the group's second brewery was built, in Rotterdam.

In 1886 the brewery's laboratory developed the A-yeast, which still gives Heineken its character today. It was the first imported beer to enter the United States after Prohibition ended in 1933, and in 1968 Heineken merged with Amstel. Freddy Heineken, the founder's grandson, became chairman in 1971; he introduced the "smiling e" in the logo and made green the brand's colour. In Brazil, the beer has been brewed since 1990, at first under licence; the group settled in for good in 2010, when it bought FEMSA's breweries, and in 2017 it bought Brasil Kirin, the former Schincariol, becoming the country's second-largest brewer.