News - UAE's first beer brewery to open in Abu Dhabi

A beer brewery will open this month in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), becoming the first company to legally make alcohol in the region, Bloomberg reported. The emirate has granted a license to the restaurant Craft by Side Hustle to sell beer on tap that’s been brewed on premises. You can already buy Side Hustle’s imported beer and spirits in UAE liquor stores, but all packaged products will still have to be manufactured abroad under the new regulations. The brewery is the first to open under a little-noticed rule change published in Abu Dhabi in 2021, which allowed license holders to ferment alcoholic beverages for consumption on site. It’s the latest in a series of moves loosening socially conservative laws in the United Arab Emirates and the surrounding Gulf region, as countries open up their economies and focus on industries other than oil.