What Grain Did Our Ancestors Brew Beer From?

Grain in Folklore Records About Beer

What kinds of grain were used to brew beer in the Belarusian lands? Evidence can be found not only in historical brewing recipes and economic documents, but also in folk songs, rituals and other folklore and ethnographic records.

For this study, I examined 40 volumes of the Беларуская народная творчасць series, materials published as Беларускі фальклор у сучасных запісах, and folk-song collections by Anton Hrynievič, including Bielaruskije piesni z notami published in 1910 and 1912.

The material contained 440 records in which beer is mentioned in one form or another.

Only 92 records, however — approximately 20.9% of all the beer references found — explicitly identify the grain associated with the beer.

Wheat, Barley and Rye

Among the 92 records that identify the grain, the distribution is:

• wheat — 43 records (46.7%);
• barley — 38 records (41.3%);
• rye — 11 records (12.0%).

Wheat beer is therefore the most frequently identified type in this particular dataset, closely followed by barley beer, while references to rye beer are substantially less common.

These figures should not be interpreted as statistics on historical beer production. They describe only the distribution within the examined folklore and ethnographic records in which the grain is explicitly identifiable.

Interactive Map

All 92 records were plotted on an interactive map and divided into separate layers according to grain type:

• wheat beer — 43 records;
• barley beer — 38 records;
• rye beer — 11 records.

Individual entries preserve not only geographical coordinates but also, where available, information about the source, the title and full text of the record, the place and date when it was documented, and the person from whom it was recorded.

Interactive map: “Беларускае піва. 🍺”

The map makes it possible to examine both the types of grain mentioned in the sources and the geography of the surviving evidence.

What the Dataset Tells Us

Folklore is not a technical manual for brewing. Nevertheless, hundreds of references to beer demonstrate how frequently the drink appears in songs, rituals and other records of traditional culture.

The 92 records in which a particular grain can be identified are especially useful. They show that the documented tradition associated beer with at least wheat, barley and rye.

The map should therefore be treated not as a definitive reconstruction of what Belarusians brewed in every historical period, but as a research tool based on surviving documented references. It can be expanded as additional sources are identified.