Beer in Slovakia (Slovak: pivo) has been produced and consumed at least since the 15th century. Together with the neighbouring Czech Republic, with whom it has a shared and intertwined history, Slovakia has a number of breweries and a rich beer culture.
Brews in Slovakia usually range between 3.8 and 5.0% alcohol content, and are traditionally classified by their density, or specific gravity using the Plato scale. This is the amount of dissolved solids before fermentation and tells roughly how much fermentable material (usually malted barley) was used and hints at what the alcohol content might be. Common measurements of 10° or 12° would be equivalent to 1040 or 1048 in the English "original gravity" scale. A common misconception is that this is a measure of the colour of the beer.
Since the fall of communism, most large commercial breweries were privatized and subsequently bought by foreign multinational companies. Today most are owned by either Heineken or SABMiller.