Cretan Brewery

Cretan Brewery S.A is the first microbrewery in the prefecture of Chania Crete. The brewery is located in Zounaki village, in the municipality of Platanias. Its highly sophisticated industrial facilities, occupy 2000m², surrounded by orange trees and olive groves. Found, just 25 km away from Chania city center, on the way to the most popular beaches in the area like Balos, Elafonisi and Paleochora.

The vision belongs to Ioannis Lionakis, who founded the brewery in 2007. Ioannis, a mechanical engineer in profession, was born, raised and proud to be Cretan. A long time beer enthusiast himself, he had the aspiration to offer local people and visitors, a fresh, delicious beer, which was something that was missing from the Cretan market.

The vision became reality and reality turned into a perpetual commitment to excellence. Here at Cretan Brewery, our goal is the production and distribution of excellent, handcrafted beers that exude Crete, its traditions and its timeless values through every glass. Our top priority, is the creation of full-flavored, pure beers without preservatives nor additives, which will satisfy even the most demanding beer connoisseurs.

Following the expansion of the brewery in 2015, we achieved a tenfold increase in our brewing capacity. In the new sector, we installed brand-new, up-to-date equipment, under the supervision of an experienced engineer.

Our beer is fresh. Fresh equals unfiltered and unpasteurized.

Fresh, unfiltered beer is the purest and most natural state of beer. It is hazy, tasty and full flavored and retains all the nutrients from its raw materials as well as the yeast, which has very high nutritional value.

We ensure the quality of production by using state-of-the-art equipment, while all beer batches undergo strict quality controls before the final stage of kegging. We take our business seriously, we keep up to date with the latest developments of today’s brewing know how and we ensure regular training for all our employees.

We care about our land and we want to minimize our footprint as much as possible, for future generations. Our production process is environmentally conscious and we are constantly trying to find new ways, which will enable us be as energy efficient as possible.

For our heating needs, we use solar panels as well as burning olive pits, both great sustainable energy resources. For our cooling needs, we have installed a geothermal cooling system, whose “heat waste” is also being used during the brewing process, rather than being wasted in the environment.

A traditional brewery uses about 10lts of water to produce 1lt of beer. We have optimized the water usage and managed to decrease consumption to 5lt per lt of beer.

By-products like leftover yeast and boiled barley, are used as animal feed and bio fertilizer. In general, we try to take advantage of every by-product of the brewing process in order to have the minimum impact on the environment.