If there was any place or time where "Mediterranean" could mean something beyond a geographical designation, it would be in the Egyptian beer industry in the period from 1890 to 1961. From its beginnings in the late 1890s to its nationalization in 1961, its owners, workers, and customers were a heterogeneous mix of peoples from across the Mediterranean basin. Moreover, from the 1930s until the 1960s, the industry was a duopoly seemingly divided along non-Mediterranean vs. Mediterranean lines. The two companies that controlled the industry were the Dutch-controlled Pyramid Brewery and the Greek-controlled Crown Brewery. This paper, using Egyptian and Dutch archival records, attempts to find the "Mediterranean" in the Egyptian beer industry in the period from 1890 to 1961. As I show, "Mediterranean" was not an operable identity in the industry. In its early years, between 1890 and 1940, those within it were more likely to align based on confessional lines (Christian vs. Muslim) or hierarchical status (management vs. workforce). After 1940, with the rise of economic nationalism, these same battles were infused with national import, but again there was little sense of Mediterranean solidarity. Nevertheless, Mediterranean is a useful descriptor for the industry as a whole before nationalization. The term Mediterranean allows us to faithfully reckon with an industry comprised of many who defied the easy classifications of "foreign" or "local." With this term we can handle people-like the second generation Jewish migrant from Spain who spoke Arabic, and had lived his whole life in Egypt, but had no Egyptian citizenship-who have proved so problematic to conceptualize within the foreign vs. local dichotomy. This conclusion also allows us to move beyond the state-supported historical narrative of the Egyptian economy in this period, which characterized it as a perpetual struggle between the exploitative foreign compradors and the beleaguered locals. Rather we can see the economy as an arena where nationality only became important when it could be weaponized in struggles between state and private actors or capital and labor. Although no one at the time would have called it so, if we were to assign an identity to the pre-1961 Egyptian beer industry, Mediterranean would be most fitting.