Beer Glasses, Drinking Games and Politics during the Reign of Augustus III

When I began reading Jędrzej Kitowicz's account of life and customs under Augustus III, I expected to find plenty of everyday details: banquets, clothing, traditions, noble culture, religious observances and social practices. But the further I got into the sections on drinks, feasts and local noble assemblies, the more one question kept coming back to me: how did this state manage to survive for so long?

Kitowicz was an 18th-century Polish memoirist and the author of Opis obyczajów i zwyczajów za panowania Augusta III (Description of Manners and Customs during the Reign of Augustus III). The work was first published in Poznań in 1840, after the author's death. It describes life in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under Augustus III, with separate sections devoted to drinks and hospitality at sejmiks, the local assemblies of the nobility.

Those pages make an almost physical impression on me. This is not simply a story about people who liked to drink. No. In Kitowicz's account, alcohol is part of the social machinery. It is used to welcome guests, test who belongs, humiliate the vulnerable, recruit political supporters, influence the lesser nobility, build a host's reputation and even fuel political struggles at the sejmiks.

Kitowicz writes that in places where beer was fashionable, people drank it “from breakfast until dinner, from dinner until bedtime.” What is more, a sober guest could spoil the impression of a feast: if the company failed to get drunk, or if a guest took his leave while still sober, the gathering might be judged a failure. A nobleman who maintained such sobriety in his own home could be scornfully called a “Frenchman” or a “vendikishka”—a derogatory nickname compared to a smoked sausage casing.

The Beer and Drinking Geography of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Before turning to unusual glasses and drinking games, we need to look at the beer itself. Kitowicz makes one thing clear: the Commonwealth was not a single, uniform drinking culture. Different lands preferred different beverages, and to me this is one of the details that makes his account so vivid. Wine predominated in some places, distilled spirits in others, mead elsewhere, and in certain regions it was beer that mattered most.

Among the great lords, wine was often the principal drink after dinner. Kitowicz mentions Hungarian wine in the Kraków and Sandomierz regions and in Ruthenia; French and other imported wines in Prussia, Kuyavia and Lithuania; and Wallachian and Manasber wine in Ukraine. In middling noble households, however, the picture was different. According to Kitowicz, Ruthenia favoured spirits, mead, cherry and raspberry drinks; Lithuania, spirits, ordinary mead and lipiec, a linden-honey mead; and Greater Poland and Masovia, spirits and beer.

Then comes a veritable catalogue of the beer geography of the 18th century. Kitowicz writes that beer from Łowicz had long been renowned in the town, its surroundings and even Warsaw. Wąchock beer was prized in and around Lublin; Gielniów beer in Piotrków; Grodzisk beer in the Poznań and Kalisz regions; and Elbląg beer in Warmia, where it was produced, was known in Warsaw as “black beer.” This is an important point: in Kitowicz's account, beer was not an anonymous drink drawn from a barrel. It was a product with a local reputation. A place name functioned almost like a mark of quality.

Towards the end of Augustus III's reign, Kitowicz says, Czech beers—ordinary and dubeltowe, or stronger, fuller-bodied varieties—as well as English beer became fashionable in Warsaw and then elsewhere. This is where a particularly interesting story of fashion and imitation begins. Genuine English beer was imported from England, but a local version also appeared. According to Kitowicz, Hieronim Wielopolski was the first to make it. Its taste resembled the English original, but it was available only on a limited scale, chiefly at his Warsaw palace and at Obory, about three miles from the city, where it was brewed.

Fashions then shifted again: from English beer to beer from Otwock, then Wilanów and, finally, Livonia. Kitowicz remarks that Livonian beer was no longer as strong or as effervescent as genuine English beer. And here we encounter something almost modern: a method of imitating a fashionable drink. Urban tavern-keepers learned to pour young beer, not yet fully fermented, into large demijohns and small bottles. In a large vessel sealed with clay, further fermentation made the beer more pleasant than when served straight from the barrel. In a small, tightly stoppered bottle, it would foam and fizz when opened, much like genuine English beer. In modern brewing language, we would call this continued fermentation in a sealed container and the natural absorption of carbon dioxide—in other words, bottle conditioning and carbonation.

I would not call this counterfeiting in the modern legal sense: Kitowicz does not describe the falsification of branded labels. But it does look very much like a commercial imitation of fashion. Genuine English beer had acquired an image of prestige: strong, lively, sparkling and bottled. Local sellers quickly worked out how to produce a comparable effect. Take young beer, let it finish fermenting in a sealed container, and you get foam, pressure and the impression of something “English.”

Against this background, Grodzisk beer stands out. Older favourites such as Łowicz, Gielniów and Wąchock gradually lost their exceptional status and became more commonplace. Grodzisk beer, by contrast, was increasingly prized in Greater Poland. Kitowicz notes, almost ironically, that a nobleman who did not keep Grodzisk beer at home might be regarded as poor or miserly. Physicians helped its reputation by attributing properties similar to those of mineral waters to it. Kitowicz himself describes it as delicate, delicious and not liable to “turn one's head”—in other words, not especially intoxicating. When doctors prohibited other beverages during an illness, they sometimes allowed Grodzisk beer and in certain cases even prescribed it.

Kraków and Sandomierz look almost anti-beer in this account. Kitowicz says that no beer other than genuine English beer was held in particularly high esteem there. Peasants and common people, as in Ruthenia and Lithuania, preferred spirits, while the nobility and wealthy townspeople favoured Hungarian wine because of Hungary's proximity. Kitowicz cannot resist a barb: good beer is better than the poor wine served in private homes around Kraków and Sandomierz—thin, watery stuff, almost the rinsings of Hungarian wine presses.

A Barrel by the Fireplace: 188 Litres and the Servant's Shoes

After this tour of beer preferences, an extraordinary scene involving a barrel becomes easier to understand. Kitowicz writes that when a group of formidable beer drinkers gathered, the barrel was placed right “in the chimney”—that is, beside the fireplace or stove, close to the drinking party. Such a barrel might not merely empty quickly; its contents could be drained “down to the yeast,” sometimes with the yeast itself.

The most astonishing episode concerns a barrel holding fifty garnce. An old Polish garniec is often approximated at 3.77 litres. On that basis, fifty garnce would be around 188 litres of beer. Kitowicz claims that four, and sometimes only two, “good swallowers” could empty such a barrel between supper and bedtime, barely reaching midnight. We are not talking about an entire day or a feast lasting several days, but a single evening.

This cannot be read literally: almost 188 litres of beer for two or four people in one evening is plainly implausible. It makes more sense to recognize Kitowicz's hyperbole and satirical style than to treat the passage as a reliable measurement of consumption. He conjures up near-mythical “knights of the tankard,” people whose drinking endurance created a reputation of its own.

The funniest detail is also the most practical: the barrel stood by the fireplace partly for the sake of economy. Not because it was elegant, or because anyone wanted an impressive presentation. Kitowicz explains it quite simply: the servant would not wear out his shoes by constantly running to the cellar and back with a jug. The hosts apparently knew in advance that this party would drain the barrel to the dregs. So the rational thing was to bring it close—and save not the beer, but the servant's footwear.

It is in details like these that Kitowicz is at his best. A vast historical world suddenly comes into focus through an amusing piece of household arithmetic: noble bravado, beer-drinking prestige, a barrel holding almost 188 litres, a fireplace, guests, a host—and somewhere nearby a servant whose shoes are being spared because the barrel is doomed anyway.

Trick Drinking Vessels: Kulawka, Kij, Vexierglas and Passglas

What amazes me here is not simply the drunkenness. People have drunk everywhere and in every age. What fascinates me is something else: the ability to drink became a social virtue, and drinking vessels themselves became part of the challenge. They were not neutral containers but instruments of games, pressure, laughter and displays of status.

Kitowicz lists a whole range of unusual vessels intended specifically for beer: long glass “sticks” with a large spherical bulb at one end, little tankards with tubes, trumpets, horns and large glasses with three applied rings. This list alone shows that we are not dealing with ordinary household ware. We have entered the world of trick glassware: vessels designed to surprise and amuse, to make someone drink awkwardly, make mistakes, spill beer over themselves or become the target of ridicule.

Kulawka: The Glass You Cannot Put Down

The first important vessel is the kulawka. To a Belarusian speaker, the word may suggest куляць—to turn or overturn something—although that association should not be mistaken for a proven etymology.

In Kitowicz's description, a kulawka is a drinking glass or goblet without a stable foot: you cannot set it down on the table in the ordinary way until it is empty. With a normal glass, you can pause: drink, put it down, talk. A kulawka gives you no such opportunity. It practically forces the drinker to see the task through to the end.

In Polish tradition, such a vessel was also called a kusztyk. In essence, it was a glass without a stable base, commonly associated with ceremonial toasts, vivats and conspicuous drinking.

Kitowicz describes one example of its use. A host welcomed a guest and proclaimed a vivat in his honour. If the guest failed to empty the kulawka before the host finished speaking, the glass was refilled and the performance began again.

What is particularly interesting is that kulawka glasses really were manufactured in the 18th century at the Radziwiłł glassworks in Naliboki and Urzecze. These factories operated in what is now Belarus and were closely connected to the magnate culture of the Radziwiłł family.

Catalogues and museum descriptions of the Naliboki and Urzecze glassworks include various forms of ceremonial and table glass: flutes, dublety, toast glasses, large drinking vessels and kulawka glasses. The kulawka was thus part of the actual material culture of noble and magnate banquets, not merely a comic word found in Kitowicz.

A particularly striking example is the kulawka bearing the Ostoja and Trąby coats of arms, attributed to the Urzecze–Naliboki workshops and dated to the last quarter of the 18th century. From its description and photograph, we see a clear glass vessel with a gilded rim and engraved heraldic ornament.

This one object brings together two sides of the culture. On one hand, the drinking game and pressure to finish every drop; on the other, status, heraldry, ceremony and membership in the world of noble and magnate symbols.

The Glass “Stick” and the English Yard-of-Ale

The second type is the long glass kij—literally, a “stick.” Kitowicz describes it as an elongated glass vessel with a substantial gałka, or round bulb, at the end.

Drinking from it was uncomfortable not only because of the amount of beer but because of the technique itself. The drinker had to lean far backwards, twist the body into an awkward position, hold the vessel at the right angle and somehow keep the flow under control.

A cautious comparison can be made here with the English yard-of-ale, also known as a long glass. It is a long, narrow vessel for ale, often ending in a spherical bulb. English descriptions classify such vessels as trick glasses: when the drink is nearly finished, air enters the bulb and the remaining liquid may suddenly rush towards the drinker's face.

The geometry is remarkably similar: a long tube and a bulb at its end. So is the challenge. The glass turns drinking into a test of coordination, and a mistake provides entertainment for the onlookers.

A famous story involving the yard-of-ale concerns Bob Hawke, the future Prime Minister of Australia. While studying at Oxford, he was credited with drinking from such a glass in approximately 11–12 seconds. Accounts differ on the details and on whether the feat truly qualified as a world record, so the figure should not be presented as an uncontested result.

Still, precision matters here. I cannot claim that Kitowicz's kij and the English yard-of-ale were exactly the same vessel, or that the two terms were used interchangeably in contemporary Polish catalogues. It is more accurate to treat the yard-of-ale as a useful visual and typological parallel that helps us imagine what Kitowicz's kij may have looked like and how it worked. The identification remains a cautious comparison, not a proven equivalence.

Tankards with Tubes: A Test of Who Belongs

The third type is the kufelki z rurkami, literally “little tankards with tubes.” In Kitowicz, these are not merely oddly shaped objects. They are almost mechanical traps, and a striking example of how a drinking party tested who was an insider and who was not.

Such a vessel required knowledge rather than strength. If someone wanted to take the tankard away from the mouth but did not know that a tube had to be blocked at the right moment—for example, with the tongue—the beer would spill over them. Someone familiar with the trick appeared to belong: an experienced member of the noble company, initiated into its unwritten rules. The outsider or novice revealed himself at once, doused in beer and exposed to the laughter of the group.

Yet for all the cruelty of such a test, humiliation was not the only aim. It turned drinking into a game, a comic performance in which the glass was a prop and the drinker became an actor in a banquet spectacle.

These objects fit well within the category of Vexierglas, or “puzzle glasses.” Museum descriptions present them as vessels that require the drinker to work out exactly where and how to drink so that the liquid flows correctly and does not end up all over them.

Polish museum literature also uses the term szkło-zagadka—“riddle glass” or “puzzle glass.” To me, this is an unusually apt description. The person is not simply handed beer; they are given a problem to solve. And an error instantly produces a public comic effect.

Trumpets and Horns: Drinking as Theatre

The fourth type is trąby i waltornie: vessels shaped like trumpets and horns. Here the glassware directly imitates musical instruments.

Polish museum writings on trick glassware indeed refer to “silent trumpets and horns”—objects that resembled instruments but were meant for drinking, not making music. This is Baroque logic at its most playful: an object deceives expectations, plays with form and turns the banquet into a stage.

Ring-Marked Glasses and Passglas

The fifth type consists of large drinking glasses with three applied rings. This is perhaps one of the easiest beer games to understand.

Kitowicz explains the rule: a participant had to announce in advance which ring they intended to drink down to in a single attempt. If they fell short, more beer was poured in. If they drank beyond the promised mark, the glass was refilled as well.

The trap lay in precision. The challenge was not simply to drink a large quantity, but exactly the quantity promised. A mistake became a punishment: the glass was topped up, and the participant either carried on drinking or pleaded for mercy, to the amusement of the company.

This game closely resembles the tradition of Paßglas / Passglas: tall vessels with horizontal applied rings. In German-speaking regions, such glasses were used in drinking games in which a participant had to drink down to the next mark and pass the vessel along. Missing the mark might mean drinking on to another ring or starting over, depending on the company's rules.

In the Polish context, these objects can be compared with the szklanice obrączkowe, or ring-marked drinking glasses. The version described by Kitowicz is particularly interesting because he specifically mentions three rings.

One modern parallel particularly caught my attention. Guinness drinkers have a similar challenge known as Split the G: take a single drink from a branded Guinness glass and leave the beer level exactly on a chosen part of the logo. Different variations use the letter G or another part of the Guinness lettering as the target.

Of course, this does not establish a continuous tradition stretching from the Passglas to today's Guinness challenges. But the underlying idea is strikingly similar: drinking becomes a test of precision. It is not enough to drink; you must hit the mark. Miss it, and the others laugh, argue and urge you to try again.

“Piwo — dobre — nalej”: The Game That Refills Your Glass When You Fail

Against this background, the drinking games described by Kitowicz begin to make more sense. One of the most memorable is the game of three drinks and three words: piwo — dobre — nalej, meaning “beer — good — pour more.”

One person sat at a table while the others gathered around as judges and witnesses. The player took a glass of beer and had to drink it not all at once, but in three stages.

After the first drink, the participant had to perform a sequence of gestures once each: run a finger along one side of the moustache and then the other, down the beard and then upwards beneath it, tap the top of the table and then its underside, stamp a foot, and pronounce the word piwo.

After the second drink, the entire sequence had to be performed twice and followed by the word dobre. After the third, each gesture was repeated three times, ending with nalej.

On paper, this sounds like a simple children's counting game. At an actual banquet, however, it was a trap. The surrounding company deliberately interrupted, distracted, hurried and laughed at the player. Make a mistake in a gesture, the order, the number of repetitions or the final word, and the glass was topped up: the game began all over again. The more a person drank, the more likely another mistake became. And the more mistakes they made, the faster they turned from a player into a victim of the game.

To me, this makes one thing especially clear: we are no longer dealing with an ordinary banquet, but with a ritual separating insiders from outsiders. If you survived the challenge, you belonged. If you stumbled, soaked yourself, fled through the door or begged for mercy, you were branded weak and laughed at.

It is hard not to think of a familiar modern taunt: “What, are you too weak to finish it?” Of course, I am not claiming that today's behaviour descended directly and without interruption from 18th-century noble feasts. But Kitowicz shows just how old the logic of such pressure can be. Drinking becomes a test of endurance, membership of the group and willingness to obey its rules.

Alcohol serves as a social examination. Vessels, gestures, words, rings on glass, tubes and awkward shapes are all parts of one mechanism: a public test that draws a person into the company through the risk of a humiliating, comic failure.

And, to be frank, there is something both wild and fascinating about it. We are not looking at a primitive “they got drunk and went home.” We are looking at a whole culture of banquet theatre—with props, rules, roles, judges, penalties, winners and losers.

Drunkenness as a Political Instrument

Another shock is the relationship between alcohol and politics. Kitowicz writes that “nothing could be done among the people without drunkenness”: one could neither win consent, nor hold elections, nor secure one's interests without treating people to drink according to their importance.

Again, contemporary parallels spring to mind: “wetting” a new purchase with a drink, discussing business over a bottle, or settling matters around the table. I am not drawing a straight line from these habits to 18th-century noble society. Yet the underlying logic is recognizable: alcohol becomes more than a beverage. It is a social tool, an occasion for sealing an agreement, easing tension, signalling trust or bringing someone into the circle of insiders.

For this reason, magnates and powerful lords kept formidable drinkers close to them, men who could drink on their behalf while their patrons retained clearer heads and directed the already “clouded minds” of others towards their own objectives.

This, perhaps, is the most important political detail. The drunkard is not merely a reveler. He is a tool. The “knight of the glass” becomes part of a political technique. Those who provide the best food and drink attract more supporters. Those who know how to bring the lesser nobility into a pliable state gain a more manageable crowd at the sejmik.

Kitowicz's description of the sejmiks reads almost like a chronicle of political banqueting. Great lords and wealthy nobles enjoyed good dishes and drinks, especially Hungarian wine. The lesser nobility had separate tables—in inns, gardens, courtyards and beneath tents. They were served spicy, salty and sour meat to make them thirstier. In the morning they were given vodka or other distilled spirits, then bread, butter and roast meat; those who became thirsty were offered beer.

It was almost a system: do not feed them so heavily in the morning that they become incapable of moving; preserve their ability to take part in the assembly; bring them to the meeting place after explaining whom to support and whom to oppose. After the sitting came the feast, which might last until midnight or through to dawn. The lesser nobility were given wine mixed with spirits to cloud their judgement more quickly, with beer to quench their thirst.

Kitowicz's ending is brutal, almost cinematic. Once drunk, people collapsed wherever they happened to be: at tables, under tables, beneath fences, in the middle of streets, in ditches and in the mud. Some woke to find that their hats, belts, sabres or even clothes were gone. If their political patron had won, he might compensate his supporters for their losses. If he had lost or fled the assembly, a nobleman could be left not only without his possessions but without an arm, an ear, part of his jaw—or his life.

Why This Matters Today

After reading these passages, I find myself looking differently at familiar stereotypes. We often hear the simplistic pairing of “Russians and vodka.” Yet Kitowicz shows that heavy drinking, drinking contests, feats of alcoholic endurance and politically motivated hospitality were deeply embedded in the noble world of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

I am not literally claiming that people from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or the Commonwealth “taught Russians to drink.” Such a claim would require its own evidence. But as a provocative question, Kitowicz's account makes the subject look different. Perhaps the cliché about “Russian drunkenness” is far too simple, and perhaps some of the most elaborate traditions of drinking bravado deserve to be sought in the noble culture of our own lands as well.

One more thing matters to me. In Kitowicz, alcohol is not only destructive. It is also theatre. A game. A trial. A ritual. A competition. Sometimes amusing, sometimes cruel or degrading, but always intensely social. People did not simply drink quietly or “for the taste.” They drank in public, according to rules, with assigned roles, winners and losers.

That is why I find the idea of bringing historical beer games and banquet rituals into modern pubs and bars appealing—not drunkenness for its own sake, but a safe, cultural and playful interpretation. The point would not be to make people intoxicated. It would be to show that beer culture is not just about the glass and the style of beer, but also about the way people interact. We could reconstruct historical vessels, rules, humorous challenges, old toasts and team games, while removing the coercion and humiliation.

Kitowicz's game of gestures—“beer, good, pour more”—for example, could become a lively pub activity if compulsory drinking were replaced by a symbolic sip or a non-alcoholic option. Unusually shaped vessels—long glass tubes, trick tankards and glasses marked with rings—could become part of educational tasting evenings. And the story of the sejmiks could show visitors that in the 18th century beer and alcohol were not merely drinks, but a language of politics, status and belonging.

For me, these pages of Kitowicz are not an invitation to romanticize drunkenness. Quite the opposite. They show how dangerous it can be when alcohol becomes the primary way of building social relationships. At the same time, they open up an extraordinarily rich layer of culture: funny, coarse, theatrical, noble and vividly alive.

And perhaps my main conclusion is this: in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, people did not merely drink a great deal. They knew how to turn drinking into a social spectacle. That spectacle—with its games, vessels, gestures, politics and excesses—is worth studying, presenting and rethinking today. Not so that we can repeat the abuses of the past, but so that we can understand how deeply beer and the banquet were woven into the history of our lands.