The Beer Symbol, From Cuneiform to U+1F37A
Three different things get called the beer symbol: the mug character you can paste, the ancient signs that named the drink in Sumerian and Egyptian, and the trademarked craft brewer seal. Only the first is copyable text.
Tap any tile to copy it. Nothing is sent anywhere — the copy happens in your browser.
Repeat it 100, 1000 or 10,000 times
100 copies — 499 characters.
1. The symbols you can actually paste
| Character | Official Unicode name | Codepoint | Added in | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🍺 | Beer Mug | U+1F37A | Unicode 6.0 | Emoji. Full color on every phone |
| 🍻 | Clinking Beer Mugs | U+1F37B | Unicode 6.0 | Emoji. Two mugs, a toast |
| ⛾ | Cup On Black Square | U+26FE | Unicode 5.2 | Text symbol, not emoji. Monochrome, patchy font coverage |
Only the first two are emoji. ⛾ sits in the Miscellaneous Symbols block with no color presentation, so it renders in whatever text font is to hand and turns into an empty rectangle on devices that do not cover it. It is the closest thing to a beer text symbol and it is not dependable. The mug gets a full treatment on its own page.
2. The ancient marks
The Sumerian word for beer is kas, written in cuneiform with its own sign. Administrative tablets record beer rations, and beer worked as a form of payment long before it meant anything symbolic. The best known text is the Hymn to Ninkasi, a poem addressed to the goddess of beer that walks through the brewing steps in order.
The Egyptian word is henket, transliterated hnqt, written with a beer jug among the vessel signs in Gardiner’s sign list. Egyptian beer was a staple ration too, paid to workers rather than saved for feasts.
Neither is on your emoji keyboard. Unicode does encode historic scripts in dedicated scholarly blocks, but mainstream phone and desktop fonts do not cover them, so a pasted sign arrives as an empty box in WhatsApp, in Instagram or in a username field. For a design, use an image of the mark, not text.
3. The independent craft brewer seal
The upside-down bottle seal used by American independent brewers is a trademark of the Brewers Association, licensed to breweries that meet its definition of independence. It is a logo file, not a character. There is no codepoint and nothing to copy, and using it on something you do not own is a trademark question, not a typography one. The same goes for every brewery’s mark.
Other things people mean by beer symbol
- Chemical symbol for beer. There is none, because beer is a mixture rather than a compound. The molecule people have in mind is ethanol, C2H5OH.
- No beer symbol. A crossed-out mug on a sign is a drawn pictogram. Nothing in Unicode carries a prohibition slash across a mug.
- Beer symbol for Facebook. Facebook renders the same codepoints in its own emoji font. There is no Facebook-only beer character. 🍺 pasted there is still U+1F37A.
- Beer symbol PNG. That is an image request. A pasted character takes on whatever emoji font the receiving app uses.
Caveats
- Screen readers announce beer mug and clinking beer mugs. ⛾ is usually read as unknown or skipped.
- Trademarked seals are not characters and should not be faked from lookalike glyphs.
The full character set is indexed on beer emoji copy and paste, and the drawn versions are on beer ASCII art.