The Dojlidy Brewery: What the 1628 Radziwiłł Estate Inventory Reveals

When we think of brewing in the seventeenth century, we often imagine a small wooden building, a furnace, a few wooden vats and a brewer following recipes handed down from generation to generation. But what did a brewery on a large magnate estate in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania actually look like?

An unusual historical document helps answer this question: the inventory of the Dojlidy estate, dated 17 November 1628, compiled on the property of Prince Krzysztof Radziwiłł.

I came across a Polish publication entitled Browar w Dojlidach 1628 r. (The Brewery in Dojlidy in 1628), published in Białystok in 2022 by Kompania Piwowarska SA. The book presents a historical estate inventory describing the estate's buildings, possessions and economic activities, including its brewery and associated facilities.

What particularly interested me was the technological side of this document: what equipment was used, where malt was produced, how grain and beer were stored, and what these details reveal about the organisation of brewing almost four hundred years ago.

Dojlidy and the Radziwiłł Family: Historical Background

Today, Dojlidy forms part of the Polish city of Białystok. In the seventeenth century, however, these lands belonged to the Radziwiłł family, one of the most influential magnate families in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

There is an important historical and geographical detail here. Following the Union of Lublin in 1569, much of Podlasie became part of the Polish Crown. However, Dojlidy, along with certain neighbouring Chodkiewicz estates, remained within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and was assigned to Grodno County in the Trakai Voivodeship. The Polish historian Józef Maroszek discusses this in his study Pięć wieków Ziemi Juchnowieckiej (2013).

By the early seventeenth century, Dojlidy had become part of the Radziwiłł estates. In 1628, it belonged to Prince Krzysztof Radziwiłł (1585–1640), the Field Hetman of Lithuania.

The inventory was compiled on 17 November 1628 by Maciej Berzański and Adam Skorobohaty. It was prepared in connection with the leasing of the estate to Samuel Przypkowski, who was associated with the Polish Brethren, a religious movement also known as the Arians.

Documents of this kind were primarily drawn up for economic and legal purposes. Buildings, equipment, property, income and obligations had to be recorded so that both parties understood exactly what was being transferred into management.

For a historian of brewing, such an inventory is especially valuable. Its compilers were not concerned with producing an attractive description or praising the estate's owner. They were recording tangible assets.

The Dojlidy Brewery: Buildings and Equipment

A Separate Building for Brewing

The estate description mentions a separate brewery building roofed with wooden shingles made from thin strips of timber.

This is a significant detail. Brewing took place in a dedicated structure intended to accommodate production equipment.

However, the existence of a separate building does not, by itself, reveal its dimensions, brewing capacity or workforce. Such estimates would require additional evidence.

A Copper Brewing Kettle on a Stone Furnace

One of the most interesting pieces of equipment was a copper brewing kettle installed over a stone furnace.

According to the account of the inventory, the kettle was described as old but still suitable for use.

For a brewer, this is a particularly meaningful detail. A metal kettle made it possible to heat liquid directly over a heat source and represented a substantial investment in the estate's equipment.

The presence of a copper kettle indicates the use of equipment designed for repeated operation. Nevertheless, the document does not provide its capacity, wall thickness or structural specifications.

We can therefore identify a permanent brewing installation, but we cannot determine the volume of an individual brew.

Nor should we automatically attribute any particular brewing technique to Dojlidy simply because its kettle was made of copper.

Wooden Vats, Troughs and Working Equipment

Alongside the kettle, the inventory mentions wooden vats, troughs for transferring liquid, tables and benches.

At first glance, these are ordinary objects. Taken together, however, they help us imagine how the work might have been organised.

The vats could have been used for mashing, transferring wort, cooling it or performing other operations. Troughs made it easier to move liquid between vessels, while tables and benches provided working surfaces and furniture.

It is important to emphasise that the precise purpose of each individual vat cannot always be established from its name in an inventory. Assigning specific items of equipment to particular stages of the brewing process therefore remains a reconstruction rather than a literal account of what happened.

Nevertheless, the combination of a kettle, wooden vessels and auxiliary equipment indicates that this was not simply an isolated vessel used for preparing a drink. It was a production area involving several interconnected operations.

The Malthouse and Drying Facilities: Preparing the Raw Materials

One of the most interesting features of the Dojlidy estate was the presence of buildings associated not only with brewing itself, but also with malt preparation.

For a modern brewer, malt is usually a finished product supplied by a specialised maltster. In the seventeenth century, however, it could be produced directly on the estate.

The Estate's Own Malthouse

The inventory materials describe a malthouse — a facility used to prepare grain for brewing.

The equipment mentioned includes:

• a clay furnace;
• shovels and wooden implements for turning grain;
• sieves;
• special working areas and depressions associated with processing and drying malt.

From a technological perspective, malting involves steeping grain, allowing it to germinate and subsequently drying it. During germination, the grain must be turned to promote uniform conditions and prevent unwanted compaction and overheating.

The presence of a dedicated facility and appropriate implements suggests that Dojlidy had its own malt-production infrastructure.

However, the inventory does not allow us to establish the exact malting procedure, germination time or drying temperature.

Malt-Drying Facilities

A separate building roofed with straw is also mentioned in connection with the malt-processing facilities.

Drying was an essential stage of malt preparation. It stopped further germination, reduced the moisture content of the grain and made the material suitable for storage and later use.

However, the available description does not establish precisely how malt was dried at Dojlidy, what temperatures were maintained or how strongly the drying process influenced the flavour of the finished beer.

The main conclusion is that the estate possessed not only equipment for brewing beer but also facilities for preparing its principal grain-based ingredient.

This suggests a developed estate infrastructure encompassing several stages of production.

The Granary, Barrels and Grain Economy

Barrels as Part of the Production System

The reference to barrels of different sizes deserves particular attention. According to the account of the inventory, the estate possessed several dozen such containers.

Today, we are accustomed to measuring a brewery's capacity by the volume of its brewhouse, the number of cylindroconical fermentation tanks or its annual beer output. Comparable figures have often not survived for seventeenth-century estates.

Inventories, however, could record the equipment required to store and transport the finished product.

Barrels were of enormous practical importance. They made it possible to store beer, move it between estate buildings and deliver it to the manor, taverns or other consumers.

A substantial stock of barrels is consistent with the possibility of regular brewing activity.

However, an important distinction must be made between documented facts and assumptions.

The number of barrels alone does not prove that beer was produced specifically for sale. Such a conclusion would require records of sales, revenue, expenditure, tavern leases or deliveries.

Furthermore, without knowing the capacity of the barrels, it is impossible to convert their number into a volume of finished beer.

The Granary and Raw-Material Storage

The estate inventory mentions a granary — spichlerz in Polish — along with other buildings used to store grain and agricultural produce.

These facilities formed an important part of brewing infrastructure. Even a well-equipped brewhouse could not operate reliably without regular access to raw materials and suitable storage conditions.

Other buildings associated with the grain economy included the threshing and storage area and the barn used to keep harvested sheaves.

Together, these facilities suggest the following general sequence:

Fields → threshing and grain storage → grain preparation → malthouse and drying facilities → brewery → barrels and finished-beer storage.

This sequence is not a verbatim seventeenth-century brewing manual. It is a reconstruction of the relationships between the facilities recorded in the inventory.

Even so, it helps illustrate an essential point: brewing was integrated into the estate's agricultural economy rather than operating independently of it.

Water, Beekeeping and Other Estate Activities

The brewery was part of a much larger manorial economy. It is therefore worth examining nearby facilities and activities that were not necessarily connected directly with beer production.

Where Did the Water Come From?

The inventory materials mention a well and a pond.

Water was, of course, essential for brewing, cleaning equipment and other estate activities. However, the existence of several potential water sources does not allow us to determine which was actually used for brewing.

Perhaps water was drawn from the well. Perhaps another source was used. Without an explicit reference in the document, selecting one explanation would be unjustified.

The question of water supply to the Dojlidy brewery therefore remains open.

More Than Beer

The inventory also describes other aspects of estate life: livestock buildings, orchards, a fishpond, an apiary with five beehives and even birds referred to in the account as "Indian chickens".

These details help us understand the diversity of the Radziwiłł estate economy.

Grain was used not only for brewing but also for food production. Livestock farming, horticulture and beekeeping represented other branches of estate activity.

It is possible to suggest various ways in which resources might have been shared between these activities. For example, spent brewing grain could have been used as animal feed — a possibility that makes sense from a technological perspective.

However, the materials examined do not provide documentary confirmation that this actually happened at Dojlidy.

The same caution applies to honey. The presence of an apiary does not necessarily mean that honey was used in beer or other alcoholic beverages.

Such details are interesting as possible directions for further research, but they should not be presented as established facts.

What Does the Inventory Reveal About the Economics of Brewing?

The inventory of 1628 allows us to examine the brewery not merely as a craft establishment but also as part of the property and economic infrastructure of a major landowner.

Production required buildings, equipment, raw materials, fuel, labour and containers.

Capital investment included constructing and maintaining buildings, acquiring a metal kettle, building furnaces and producing wooden vessels and barrels.

The existence of these facilities demonstrates that the estate possessed a material infrastructure intended for productive use.

But how intensively did the brewery operate?

Here, the inventory leaves more questions than answers.

We have no confirmed figures for the kettle's capacity, the number of brewing sessions per week, annual beer production, the size of the brewing workforce or revenue from beer sales.

It would therefore be misleading to describe Dojlidy confidently as a large commercial brewery in the modern sense.

On the other hand, the combination of a brewery, malthouse, drying facilities, grain-storage buildings and a stock of barrels provides grounds for identifying a specialised and technically equipped brewing operation integrated into the economy of a magnate estate.

The possibility that beer was produced not only for immediate consumption at the manor but also for wider estate needs is a reasonable hypothesis. Additional documents would be required to establish whether beer was produced specifically for commercial sale.

Estate Leasing and Economic Relationships

The circumstances in which the inventory was prepared also deserve attention.

The document was compiled in connection with the leasing of the estate to Samuel Przypkowski. This indicates that the land, buildings and productive facilities were also regarded as assets that could be transferred into management under agreed conditions.

Documents concerning the leasing of taverns, mills and other revenue-generating establishments are particularly promising for research into the economics of historical brewing.

They may provide information absent from an equipment inventory: monetary amounts, tenants' obligations, payment schedules and the organisation of sales.

The inventory of 1628 is therefore an important starting point for a more detailed investigation of the economic history of brewing at Dojlidy.

Dojlidy and Other Breweries: What Can We Compare?

Studying a single brewery becomes even more interesting when its equipment and infrastructure can be compared with those of other estates.

I previously examined the 1704 inventory of the town of Sapotskin, which also contains information about brewing infrastructure.

More than seventy years separate the two documents. They concern different locations, owners and economic circumstances, so any direct comparison of production volumes must be approached cautiously.

Nevertheless, it is possible to compare the types of information recorded: brewing kettles, malthouses, utility buildings, containers and other equipment.

Such comparisons can gradually help us reconstruct regional brewing practices during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, identifying recurring technological solutions as well as differences between individual estates.

Why Is the Dojlidy Inventory So Important?

For me as a brewer, the particular value of this document lies in the opportunity to see tangible objects behind the general descriptions of historical brewing.

A copper kettle, stone furnace, wooden vats, malt-processing equipment, granaries and barrels — all are components of a production system whose functions remain familiar to modern brewers, even though their technological design has changed considerably over four centuries.

The inventory provides evidence of brewing infrastructure at Dojlidy during the first half of the seventeenth century. It also demonstrates the close relationship between beer production and the grain-based agricultural economy of a magnate estate.

At the same time, the document does not reveal every stage of the brewing process, nor does it provide sufficient information for an accurate calculation of production capacity.

Another point is equally important: the history of brewing at Dojlidy forms part of the wider historical landscape of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where the economies of different regions were connected through trade, culture and family relationships.

This makes the Radziwiłł inventory relevant not only to the local history of Białystok and Podlasie but also to the study of our region's shared brewing heritage.

Conclusion

The Dojlidy inventory of 17 November 1628 is a valuable source for the history of brewing in the early modern period.

It preserves information about production equipment, raw-material preparation facilities and the economic organisation of the Radziwiłł estate.

These details make it possible to reconstruct the main components of the estate's brewing operations, although many questions — from the recipes used to the volume of beer produced and the nature of its distribution — remain unanswered.

This is one of the greatest values of historical documents: they not only provide information about the past but also reveal which questions still need to be investigated.

The Dojlidy brewery is a striking example of how developed and multifaceted brewing infrastructure on a magnate estate could already be in 1628.

And perhaps the most fascinating thought for a modern brewer is that almost four hundred years ago, this estate already possessed an entire network of buildings and equipment dedicated to transforming grain into beer.