Browar: Brewery or Distillery?

What a 1756 plan of an estate complex reveals

Recently, in the Facebook group “Archiwalia oszmiańskie: edycja ksiąg grodzkich oszmiańskich z lat 1661–1780,” I came across a post about an intriguing document from 1756: “Opisanie dyfferencji między Czapunią i Baksztami, w roku 1756 uczynione” (“Description of the boundary dispute between Czapunia and Bakszty, drawn up in 1756”). [13]

The document itself is a boundary plan separating the Bakszty (Bakshty) estate in Ashmyany County—today within the Iwye District of Belarus's Grodno Region—from the Czapunia estate and other neighbouring properties.

What caught my attention, however, was not even the main side of the document.

On the reverse, an unknown draughtsman sketched a fairly detailed plan of a browar and a wołownia—a brewery and an ox stable—belonging to one of the local estates. Because the document was preserved in the collection of the Vilnius Catholic Chapter, the author of the original post suggested that this might be the estate production complex at Bakszty.

The more closely I examined this drawing, the more interesting it became. Eventually, a rather natural question arose:

Was this browar really primarily a brewery?

Several details on the plan seem to fit the production of strong grain spirits—gorzałka or wódka, what in everyday modern language we might call moonshine—rather better.

I should make one qualification at the outset: the drawing comes without a detailed technical key. In what follows, therefore, I try to distinguish the labels actually written by its maker from a reconstruction based on comparisons with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century estate inventories.

What the plan shows

The plan is quite detailed, and a substantial number of its labels can be deciphered.

At the top is a very large:

Wołownia — an ox stable, that is, a building for keeping and probably fattening oxen.

Below it lies the main production space:

Browar — the brewery.

At the centre of the complex stands a substantial:

Komin.

To its left are:

Izba Pisarza — the clerk's room;

Komora Pisarza — the clerk's storeroom or chamber.

To the right:

Izba Czeladzi — a room for estate servants or workers.

Thus, the production building included not only working areas but also rooms for the people directly involved in running the estate.

The presence of a clerk is particularly interesting. It fits the organisation of a sizeable estate alcohol-producing operation: someone had to record deliveries of grain, consumption of raw materials, quantities of drink produced, distributions to taverns, stocks, dealings with leaseholders, and many other business transactions.

The plan alone cannot prove that the clerk lived here permanently. Still, a separate izba and komora show that space had been set aside for his work and possibly for domestic use as well.

What was the central Komin?

At first glance, one might simply translate komin as “chimney.” Judging from the layout, however, this seems to have been a much more substantial structure.

Most likely, it was a central furnace-and-flue mass, with heating and production installations adjoining it from different sides.

The rectangular projections towards the clerk's and servants' rooms may have been heating stoves, while the fireboxes of the production kettles may have connected to the same structure from the workshop side.

There is, however, no basis for claiming that these stoves necessarily operated without proper smoke extraction.

A useful comparison comes from the 1767 inventory of the brewery at Skulsk. It describes a kettle “w kotlinę wlepiony”—set into a purpose-built furnace setting—with a komin directly above it. The building also contained a kominek z kapturem, a hearth with a smoke hood. [4]

For Bakszty, it is therefore safer to speak of a central system of fireboxes and smoke extraction, where the smoke from several installations could have been gathered and vented outside.

The plan does not reveal the precise arrangement of the internal flues.

The malt house, grain and two spirits stores

The lower section of the drawing is perhaps even more interesting.

It contains the labels:

Szpichlerz na Zboże — grain store;

two separate rooms marked:

Szpichlerz na Wódki — stores for spirits;

and, separately:

Słodownia — malt house.

This suggests a fairly intelligible production chain:

grain → malt → mash preparation → fermentation → alcohol → storage of the finished product.

What is more, two separate storerooms are expressly designated “na wódki”—for spirits.

And this raises the first serious question.

On the plan known to me, there is no room identified as a beer store, beer cellar, or storage space for beer barrels.

That alone does not prove that beer was never brewed here. Beer might have been kept in casks elsewhere in the building or beyond the complex shown on the plan.

For comparison, the detailed 1771–1772 inventory of a Białystok brewery specifically mentions a room “gdzie piwo młode stawiają” (“where young beer is placed”), as well as rooms containing beer barrels. [5]

Nothing of the sort is labelled on the Bakszty plan.

Instead, we find:

one grain store + two stores for wódki.

This is not proof, but it is fairly strong circumstantial evidence as to which product may have been particularly important to the estate.

Three kettles by the central furnace

The most puzzling—and perhaps most compelling—part of the drawing is near the central Komin.

Three circular objects are shown there.

The one on the right is labelled quite clearly:

Piwny Kocioł — beer kettle.

Above the two neighbouring circles are two short inscriptions.

The first appears to read:

Ba

The second, insofar as the image quality permits:

nia

Taken together, they give:

BA–NIA

This word fits seventeenth- and eighteenth-century distilling terminology remarkably well.

The Elektroniczny słownik języka polskiego XVII i XVIII wieku (Electronic Dictionary of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Polish) explicitly records bania as a term for distilling equipment. Among the expressions are:

“bania do dystylowania”

and

“krętna bania albo alembik do palenia wódek”—

in other words, a bania or alembic used to distil spirits. [1]

An even more interesting confirmation comes from a source originating in Ashmyany County itself.

In the published Ashmyany castle court records, a late-seventeenth-century property inventory lists the following copper objects one after another:

kocioł piwny — beer kettle;

bania gorzałczana — distilling vessel;

alembik z czapką — alembic with a cap or head. [2]

Thus, several decades before our plan was drawn, people in Ashmyany County clearly distinguished between a brewing kettle, a distilling bania, and other pieces of distillation equipment.

For that reason, reading BA + NIA on the 1756 plan seems quite plausible to me.

Yet caution is essential here: I am not asserting that the draughtsman deliberately split the single word BANIA over two neighbouring kettles. This is a palaeographic interpretation of the drawing.

Two distilling kettles and one brewing kettle?

If that reading is correct, we have a rather intriguing arrangement:

[BA] [NIA] [PIWNY KOCIOŁ]

Or, in functional terms:

two positions for distilling equipment + one separately labelled brewing kettle.

And here we encounter an almost exact historical parallel.

The 1788 description of the production complex at Kocudza mentions a winiarnia—a distilling room—containing:

“kotlin gorzałczanych dwie, piwna jedna”

that is:

two furnace settings for distilling and one for brewing. [3]

Here kotlina does not necessarily mean the copper vessel itself, but rather the stone or brick furnace setting into which a kettle was installed.

This is remarkably close to what we may hypothesise from the Bakszty plan:

two distilling positions + one brewing position.

Of course, this parallel does not prove the reading BA–NIA, but it makes that interpretation appreciably more convincing.

Why, then, was the whole building called Browar rather than Gorzelnia?

To modern ears, that may sound odd.

If spirits were produced here, why did the draughtsman write Browar (“brewery”) rather than Gorzelnia (“distillery”)?

In eighteenth-century estate documentation, however, the distinction between these terms was not always as strict as we might expect today.

There are examples of buildings called browar that contained a fully functioning gorzelnia.

Moreover, modern research on the Białystok inventories shows that some establishments recorded as browary in 1771–1772 later appeared as gorzelnie in a Prussian inventory. Researcher Janusz Roszko explicitly suggests that earlier record-keepers may not always have distinguished the two and may have counted distilleries together with breweries. [5]

His findings for the late eighteenth century are even more interesting. The new state-run brewery in Białystok was effectively a combined operation: beer and gorzałka were produced there, and alembics and other equipment were later used to make stronger drinks. Accounts relating to the liquor trade from 1793 mention beer, spirits and drinking mead at the same establishment. [5]

Therefore, the word Browar on the 1756 drawing certainly does not rule out a distillery within the building.

Then what was the Piwny Kocioł for?

At first sight, this seems the strongest argument in favour of an ordinary brewery.

If strong spirits were the main product, why specifically label one vessel Piwny Kocioł—beer kettle?

A large built-in kettle, however, was an extremely useful general-purpose source of hot water.

To produce a grain spirit, starch in the grain first had to be converted into sugars that yeast could ferment.

Malt was used for this purpose.

What followed was a process very similar to the initial stages of brewing beer.

1. Grain

Raw materials came from the:

Szpichlerz na Zboże.

Rye was especially widely used for gorzałka in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, while barley played a central role in brewing.

For example, the accounts of the Białystok operation in the late eighteenth century record barley for beer and rye for spirits separately. [5]

2. Making malt

Some of the grain was germinated and then dried.

That is why the plan includes a separate:

Słodownia.

A malt house was not merely an oven for drying grain. Malting began with moistening the grain and allowing it to germinate.

An excellent parallel appears in the 1762 inventory of the Ruzhany estate.

The new brewery at the Odynowski farm is described as having a:

“porządna Słodownia”—

a proper malt house containing a wooden floor or platform:

“do roszczenia słodu”—

for germinating malt,

and, alongside it:

“Piec do Suszenia Murowany”—

a masonry kiln for drying it. [6]

Malt houses are described in even greater detail in the late-eighteenth-century Białystok inventories: they contained a vessel for soaking grain, a water supply from a pump, a separate drying furnace and a drying area above it. Metal components for releasing smoke were mentioned in connection with the furnace. [5]

This shows that malt-house construction could be quite sophisticated.

On the Bakszty plan, the Słodownia has its own separate furnace structure and is not directly connected to the central Komin. In other words, the draughtsman evidently regarded it as an independent production unit.

Still, the drawing alone cannot establish whether the malt was dried in direct contact with smoke or mainly by heated air.

3. Milling the malt

Once dried, the malt needed to be ground.

Here the Bakszty plan presents another puzzle:

no mill or crusher is visible inside the brewery.

That certainly does not mean the estate had none.

Specialised mills existed for grinding malt:

młyny słodowe — malt mills.

The 1767 Radziejów starostwo inventory expressly mentions, near the brewery, a:

“Młyn konski … do melenia Słodow”—

a horse-powered malt mill. [4]

The description gives a fairly clear picture of its construction.

It contained a large wheel turned by horses, upper and lower millstones, and a special hopper for feeding in the malt.

This is an important detail: milling could have taken place in a separate building rather than inside the brewery itself.

The situation in Białystok was similar. Janusz Roszko notes that the 1771–1772 brewery inventories do not mention any malt-grinding equipment. He suggests that dried malt may have been taken to one of the estate's milling facilities—possibly an ox-powered or water-powered mill. Only in later documents does milling machinery appear at the production site itself. [5]

This is particularly relevant to our drawing: the absence of a mill inside the Bakszty Browar does not mean that milling was absent from its production process.

A horse-powered mill or a watermill?

Horse power was a common solution.

But specialised water-powered malt mills also existed.

At Śrem, for example, written sources record the right to grind malt at a watermill on the River Warta; a fifteenth-century document notes that malt had been ground there “since time immemorial.” [7]

At Chojnice, a water-powered młyn słodowy, built as early as the fourteenth century, was driven by water from nearby lakes and used specifically to process malt. [8]

For Bakszty, a water-powered mill is especially interesting because of the local geography.

An account of the area from 1784 states that the River Islach, after flowing through the Bakszty lands:

“w samych Baksztach”—

“in Bakszty itself”—

joined the Berezina, which then flowed into the Neman. [9]

According to this description, a substantial watercourse ran directly through or near Bakszty.

Using a watermill to grind grain or malt would therefore have been entirely possible and economically sensible.

But one point must be emphasised:

I have not yet found direct evidence of a water-powered malt mill at Bakszty in 1756.

The mill may have been water-powered or horse-powered, or the malt could have been ground at another mill belonging to the estate.

This is precisely the question that would be worth investigating in eighteenth-century inventories of the Bakszty estate complex.

4. Heating water

Now let us return to the Piwny Kocioł.

Mashing required considerable quantities of hot water.

It is therefore entirely possible that, even on days when no beer was brewed, the large brewing kettle served simply as a powerful water heater.

The reuse of brewing equipment for heating water is documented elsewhere.

At one of the Branicki estate farms in the late eighteenth century, a small brewery contained:

a built-in kettle valued at 180 thalers, used “do grzania wody”—

to heat water, in this case for preparing feed for oxen. [5]

Thus, the name or original purpose of a kettle did not necessarily mean that it was used exclusively to brew beer.

5. Mashing

Hot water was mixed with crushed grain and malt in a wooden vat.

This produced:

mash.

At a suitable temperature, enzymes in the malt converted the starch in the grain into sugars.

Naturally, an eighteenth-century distiller would not have explained the process in terms of modern enzyme biochemistry.

Nevertheless, the technique was well established through practical experience.

Here we have a particularly interesting source: a late-eighteenth-century work by Krzysztof Kluk.

Kluk describes the preparation of grain spirits as follows.

First, rye was cleaned. Warm water was poured into a vat, and grain mixed with malt was added.

After stirring, some boiling water was added, the vat was covered, and the mixture was left warm for a time.

Cold water was then added, the mass was stirred again, and yeast was introduced. [10]

In other words, the temperature was regulated in a very practical way:

warm water → boiling water → resting → cold water → yeast.

No modern automation or precision temperature control was needed for this procedure.

6. Was the wort filtered?

Here we encounter an important difference from beer production.

In brewing, the liquid wort must be separated from the spent grain after mashing.

The 1767 inventory at Skulsk lists the following among the equipment of a functioning beer brewery:

• vats;
• filtering equipment;
• a trough for brzeczka (wort);
• a bench or support for the mash;
• beer barrels;
• a basket for hops. [4]

In other words, equipment used to handle beer wort is fairly recognisable in inventories.

Nothing comparable is specifically labelled on the Bakszty plan.

When making grain spirits, however, separating a completely clear liquid wort was not necessarily required.

Kluk recommends transferring the fermented grain mass, once active fermentation has finished, directly into the:

gorzałczany kocioł — distilling kettle. [10]

His description therefore does not require a separate stage in which the liquid is completely separated from the grain between mashing and distillation.

This fits reasonably well with our possible reconstruction of production at Bakszty.

7. Fermentation

After the starch had been converted into sugars, the mash had to be cooled to a temperature at which yeast could function properly.

Again, Kluk describes a very simple method:

cold water was added to the hot mass, the mixture was stirred, and then yeast was introduced. [10]

This is an interesting detail in relation to the Bakszty plan.

No large, separate cooling trough of the kind found at some breweries is visible on it.

That does not prove such equipment was entirely absent. But the spirits-production process did not necessarily require it, since water could be used to adjust the temperature.

The possible sequence, then, was:

water heating → mashing → adding cold water → yeast → fermentation.

8. Distillation

When active fermentation was drawing to a close, Kluk recommends moving the fermented mass into the distilling kettle.

A czapka—a head or cap fitted with pipes—was placed on the kettle.

The alcohol vapours passed through these pipes into the cooling apparatus.

Kluk specifically says that the pipes should run:

through a vessel filled with cold water. [10]

There, the vapours condensed into liquid distillate.

What remained in the kettle after distillation was:

braha — distillery stillage or spent wash.

This gives us an almost complete technological sequence:

grain → malt → milling → hot water → mash → cooling → yeast → fermentation → distilling kettle → vapour cooling → grain spirits + stillage.

A process of this kind could well have operated in an eighteenth-century estate complex.

Why would there be two distilling kettles?

If the two circular objects on the left really were associated with distilling equipment, the question remains: why two?

At least two arrangements are possible.

The first is parallel operation of two kettles to increase output.

The second is the use of one apparatus for an initial distillation and another for further concentrating or refining the spirit.

Kluk explicitly mentions an additional distillation through an alembic for higher-quality spirits. [10]

But the Bakszty drawing alone cannot establish the exact function of either vessel.

We should therefore speak only of possibilities.

Could beer still have been brewed here?

Of course.

The clearly labelled:

Piwny Kocioł

is substantial evidence that the brewery was technically equipped for making beer.

Moreover, the combination of brewing and distilling in a single estate complex is well documented elsewhere.

The clearest parallel is the phrase already cited:

“kotlin gorzałczanych dwie, piwna jedna.” [3]

Combined production is also documented at the new state-run brewery in Białystok in the late eighteenth century. According to the accounts from 1793, it produced:

• different types of beer;
• ordinary and sugar-based spirits;
• drinking meads. [5]

It would therefore be wrong to claim that beer was never brewed at Bakszty.

A more accurate formulation would be:

the complex was capable of producing both beer and strong grain spirits, but certain details of the plan suggest that wódka/gorzałka production may have been particularly important here.

Above all, these are:

the possible BANIA + two Szpichlerz na Wódki + Słodownia + Wołownia.

A brewery beside distilling equipment: nothing unusual

In fact, the presence of brewing and distilling equipment side by side should not surprise us.

One of the best-known early illustrated European textbooks, Jan Amos Comenius's Orbis Sensualium Pictus, first published in 1658, already presents alcohol production in close connection with brewing processes and distillation equipment.

I examined this illustration and the associated technology in greater detail in a separate article on PBP.by. [11]

This is another reminder of how closely fermentation, brewing and distillation could coexist in the economic practices of the early modern period.

Why was the ox stable directly connected to the brewery?

Perhaps one of the most remarkable features of the entire plan is the enormous:

Wołownia.

It was not merely next to the brewery; it was directly connected to it.

That seems unlikely to have been accidental.

Grain-based alcohol production generated substantial amounts of nutritious by-products.

In brewing, separating the wort left behind:

spent grain—

used malt and other grain materials.

In distilling, what remained after the spirit was extracted was:

wywar / braha — distillery stillage, or spent wash.

Braha is precisely the word Kluk uses for what remains in the kettle after distillation. [10]

The distinction matters.

Brewers' spent grain and distillers' stillage should not be treated as exactly the same material, even though both were used as animal feed.

Stillage used directly as livestock feed

Historical sources establish a direct connection between distilling and animal husbandry.

The 1767 Skulsk inventory describes a special pen behind the distillery:

“Kub dla wieprzy, na wywarze będących”—

for pigs being fattened on distillery stillage. [4]

Thus, feeding distilling by-products to livestock was not merely a theoretical possibility; it was an actual estate practice.

An even closer architectural parallel appears in the inventories of the Ruzhany estate.

In 1762, one reads the explicit description:

“Browar w Ogrodzie z Wołownią”—

“a brewery in the garden with an ox stable.” [12]

This is almost exactly the arrangement suggested by the Bakszty plan.

There is also an even more revealing example from the Branicki estates: in one complex, a wołownia stood immediately beside the brewery and malt house, while a larger distillery had a separate reservoir for braha discharged from production. [5]

The proximity of brewery and ox stable therefore made excellent economic sense.

The economics of a closed-loop estate operation

The result was an almost waste-free estate system:

field → grain → malt → alcohol → stillage/spent grain → feed → fattening oxen.

The oxen themselves were also essential to the operation of an estate.

They provided draught power and, on some properties, could drive milling machinery.

For example, records relating to the Białystok estates mention a wołowy młyn—an ox-powered mill—and production accounts record payments to a młynarz wołowy, the miller operating it. [5]

In principle, livestock at a complex like this could therefore have served several roles:

• consuming production by-products as feed;
• working as draught animals;
• powering estate machinery.

For Bakszty, that last function has not been directly demonstrated. But such arrangements were possible in the eighteenth-century estate economy.

So what was this Browar after all?

For the moment, I would formulate my conclusion as follows.

Most likely, we are not looking at a brewery in the narrow modern sense.

Instead, this appears to have been an integrated grain-processing complex on an estate, potentially combining:

• grain storage;
• malt production;
• milling malt and grain, probably outside the building shown;
• heating large quantities of water;
• preparing grain mashes;
• fermentation;
• brewing beer;
• distilling strong spirits;
• storing finished spirits;
• using production by-products to fatten oxen.

The following combination is particularly intriguing:

Piwny Kocioł + possible BA–NIA + two Szpichlerz na Wódki + Słodownia + Wołownia.

We now have a remarkably close independent parallel for this interpretation: the 1788 inventory with the wording:

“kotlin gorzałczanych dwie, piwna jedna.”

That is why I am inclined to think that grain-spirit production may have been the main purpose—or at least one of the most important purposes—of this complex.

The brewing kettle would not have been redundant.

It could have served its original purpose when beer was brewed, while also providing large quantities of hot water needed for preparing grain mash for distillation.

The absence of a labelled beer store, combined with the presence of two separate rooms marked “na wódki,” further tips the balance towards a substantial distilling operation—although it does not, by itself, rule out beer brewing.

Perhaps, however, the most interesting aspect of this drawing is not the particular drink that was made there.

What we have is virtually a diagram of how a small mid-eighteenth-century estate production complex could work.

All in one place were:

raw materials → energy → production → storage → accounting → labour → animal husbandry → reuse of waste.

And all this could be glimpsed thanks to a handful of faded labels on the reverse of a 1756 boundary plan.