Best Craft Beer Bars in Singapore

The spiritual home of Singapore craft beer. Smith Street Taps occupies a corner of the Chinatown Complex food court, which gives it an immediately democratic character that the more expensive Keong Saik Road bars cannot match. The rotating tap selection runs to 20 lines, split roughly between local Singapore breweries and imports from Asia Pacific, the US, and Europe. The team changes the list constantly, which means regulars visit weekly just to keep up.

We recommend arriving by 7pm on weekdays if you want a seat. The food court setting means you can order from any of the surrounding hawker stalls and bring it to your table, which makes Smith Street Taps one of the best places in the city to eat well and drink well simultaneously without spending more than SGD 60 for two. The only frustration is the noise level by 9pm, but that is also part of the atmosphere.

Thirsty is Singapore's most focused craft beer bottle shop and taproom. The retail selection is extraordinary, with over 400 labels from 35 countries available to take home or drink in. The tap list runs to 16 lines, rotated daily, and the staff know every beer well enough to tell you how it compares to three similar options in the fridge. This is the bar for people who read beer menus the way other people read wine lists.

The interior is compact, which creates an intimacy that larger beer bars often lose. The clientele skews toward people who work in the industry or who have been drinking craft beer seriously for at least a decade. You will learn something every visit. The Singapore bar guide recommends Thirsty as the best starting point for anyone new to the city's craft scene.

Druggists occupies a restored Peranakan shophouse on Ann Siang Hill, which puts it in one of Singapore's most architecturally striking streets. The interior makes good use of the high ceilings and original tile work, but the real reason to visit is a tap list that prioritises local and regional craft: Brewlander, RedDot, Lion Brewery Co, and rotating guests from Japan, Korea, and Australia dominate the board. Bottles extend the selection considerably.

The kitchen produces honest bar snacks that pair well with hops rather than fighting them, which is rarer than it sounds in Singapore. The weekend crowd is young and loud; Tuesday through Thursday the pace is calmer and the conversation is better. If you enjoy the Singapore hidden gem bar scene, the surrounding Ann Siang Hill cluster makes Druggists an obvious anchor for an evening.

Orh Gao means "very thick" in Hokkien, which gives you a clue about their brewing philosophy. The house beers lean toward bold: imperial stouts, double IPAs, and intensely flavoured sours built around local tropical fruit. The taproom is attached to the production facility in an industrial building in Toa Payoh, which requires a deliberate journey but rewards it with the freshest pours in Singapore. Nothing here has spent time in a transport van.

We recommend the pineapple sour and whatever the current seasonal imperial stout is called this month. The rotating guest taps bring in interesting regional producers that do not have wide Singapore distribution. Worth the MRT ride from the city centre. The Singapore bar roundup has more on the broader craft scene surrounding it.

Also inside Chinatown Complex food court, the Good Beer Company has been open since 2010, making it one of Singapore's original craft beer advocates. The focus is democratic access: good beer at prices that do not require a corporate expense account. The 40-tap selection rotates constantly, and the staff have an evangelical commitment to explaining every style to anyone who asks without making them feel uninformed.

The food court location means the same hawker stall advantage as Smith Street Taps applies here. Between the two of them, Chinatown Complex has somehow become one of the best places in Southeast Asia to drink interesting beer alongside genuinely great food. That is a remarkable accident of geography that the city should celebrate.

LeVeL33 sits on the 33rd floor of One Marina Boulevard with unobstructed views across Marina Bay toward the Merlion and the skyline beyond. What elevates it beyond a view bar is the in-house brewery, which produces a year-round range of lagers, stouts, and wheat beers alongside a rotating seasonal programme. The house brews are well-executed, properly cold-served, and meaningfully different from what the import-dependent competition offers.

This is the bar for impressing visitors or celebrating something. Prices reflect the address: a pint of house lager costs SGD 16 to SGD 20 depending on the size. The quality justifies it, and the view is part of the product. If you are visiting Singapore and can only go to one craft beer destination, choose Smith Street Taps for authenticity. Choose LeVeL33 for spectacle. They serve different purposes equally well.

RedDot is Singapore's oldest surviving craft brewery, founded in 2006 and still producing at its Dempsey Hill location. The flagship Green Monster lager has achieved something rare in Singapore: mainstream recognition among people who do not think of themselves as craft beer drinkers. More interesting to the serious drinker is the seasonal range, which explores Belgian styles, American-influenced IPAs, and the occasional barrel-aged experiment.

The Dempsey Hill setting gives RedDot an outdoor drinking culture that the city-centre bars cannot match. The large terrace under mature trees makes it a genuinely pleasant place to spend a Sunday afternoon. The surrounding Dempsey cluster means you can combine it with dinner at any of the nearby restaurants. A good choice for groups of mixed beer enthusiasm levels.

Barossa sits at the intersection of the craft beer and natural wine movements, which is a narrow target but one it hits consistently. The 12-tap selection focuses on well-chosen imports: Belgian farmhouse ales, German lagers from small family breweries, Australian craft, and rotating Asian breweries. The accompanying wine list covers natural and low-intervention bottles that appeal to drinkers who move between categories. A genuinely unusual bar in a city that sometimes struggles to be unusual.

Keong Saik Road has become one of Singapore's most interesting drinking streets over the past five years. Barossa anchors the craft end of it alongside the neighbourhood's excellent cocktail bars. Go for beer, stay for the conversation. The bartenders are among the most knowledgeable in the city on both fermented subjects.