Manual

SHORT CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY OF BREWING IN SERBIA
A Fairytale about Liquid Bread
It seems that a kind of beer was already brewed in the Neolithic (according to findings of archeologists from the National Museum in Edinburg, 1985). The homeland of beer is most probably the area between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Sumerians had both beer and Ninkasi, goddess of beer. Beer is mentioned in Hammurabi’s Law, as well as some old epics. We can still only guess who brought beer to Europe. The Celts? Greeks? Latins? It is known that, during the first millennium, it was brewed in monasteries in western Christian areas and that hop was added to the beer, which made its taste and color recognizable today. There is also something to say about beer in Serbia, from the Middle Ages till today

By: Miloš Lazić
Photo: NR Archive

It is known that people in medieval Serbia drank beer, but it was the beverage of the sebri (commoners). Aristocrats used to drink wine and mead, and memory of it is kept in legends, folk stories and poetry. Unfortunately, Serbs didn’t write their history on clay tablets (as the Sumerians did); they wrote it on parchment and paper. After the luxurious libraries in Maglič, Belgrade and Smederevo had disappeared without a trace, most often in flames, consequence of invasions of conquerors from Anatolia, only a foggy legend remained.
However, when mentioning the great economic progress of Belgrade in the early XV century at the time of enlightened Stefan Lazarević, it is impossible not to mention the story about beer, although it isn’t known whether it was brewed in the city, somewhere else in the despotate, or arrived as ”imported goods” over the Sava and the Danube.

FROM CRAFT TO INDUSTRY AND BACK

During the Austrian occupation of Belgrade, from 1718 to 1739, several smaller breweries appeared in the city, most of them in Jalija, present Dorćol, but they stopped working upon the return of the Turks. The exception was the ”Black Eagle” brewery, where the Austrian crew of Timisoara Gate camped, located exactly on the corner of present Dušanova and Kapetan-Mišina streets. However, even if it continued brewing and offering beer at all, it became famous as a kafana, and closed its gates only after the Great War. The tools and equipment for brewing were not destroyed or moved to a distant place – they went to Zemun and Pančevo, where beer was transported to thirsty citizens of Belgrade by ferries with paddles.
That is why the Big Brewery in Belgrade is considered the oldest in Serbia. Its foundations were set by Duke Miloš Obrenović during the first half of the XIX century, on the corner of present Balkanska and Admirala Geprata streets. Since the brewery also had a spacious beer garden, it became part of history because the first theatrical plays were performed in it (probably due to Joakim Vujić, then official at the duke palace in Kragujevac), as well as the place where the St. Andrew National Assembly meeting was held. If anyone discovered the unbreakable bond between kafanas, culture and politics in this, they should be warned that it’s nothing new, because our great comedy writer Branislav Nušić, who became famous as one of the first, best and most copied Serbian ”kafanologists”, already wrote about it with special ardor.
Logically, after the Big Brewery, the Small one was opened as well: it was established by Filip Đorđević in 1850, also in the capital city, because of competition on the opposite, Danube slope, where Skadarska and Cetinjska streets meet. The brewery became popular only two decades later (1869), when Ignjat Bajloni purchased and modernized it as far as possible at the time. He dug a well under it, with extraordinary good water, crucial for the beer quality.
It is important to know that breweries across the Sava and the Danube were deliberately not included in this chronological series, most of them established a century earlier, or the smaller breweries in bigger Serbian cities, because brewing in them was manufacture, so many weren’t called breweries but – workshops – which would make a confusion to any researcher! When the Big and Small breweries in Belgrade are mentioned, it’s because they were the first that advanced to a sort of industrial production.
The fact that all breweries of that time were in bigger cities was due to very bad traffic connections, and transporting barrels of beer from Valjevo to Mionica, for example, in reliable yet very slow bullock carts, would take some time and brewing wouldn’t pay off to anyone, because the price would be sky-high.
By the way, the first real industrial brewery, according to European standards, was the one started-up somewhat later in Smutekovac in Belgrade, above the Mostar Loop, by Đorđe Vajfert, industrialist and brewer from Pančevo.

FLOURISHING ON AN EMPTY STOMACH

After the war, Second World and umpteenth of ours, all Serbian breweries were nationalized. The first five-year period of planned economy threatened that something similar that happened to wine will also happen to beer – that brewery workers will compete in hectoliters, not quality. Luckily, it didn’t happen, and vicious people claimed that it’s because of the fact that beer, unlike wine, can be drunk ”on an empty stomach”, because famine, not thirst, was a bigger worry in the state desolated by the war. Thus brewing survived, even advanced!
Whatever it was, it is documented that one Belgrade brewery in the 1980s filled a million and a half bottles a day during summers! The rise was stopped in the early nineties, after the disintegration of the previous joint state. Everything died down, including brewing…
However, almost unnoticeably, something happened in the capital city in the late eighties, leaving brewers an open door and giving them at least a bit of hope: our first mini brewery was opened in the ground floor of the old ”Kasina” hotel in Terazije! The then director of the catering company that entered the uncertain endeavor remembers that the brewery was purchased in Bavaria, that it brewed high-quality Bavarian beer, that its capacity was eight hectoliters (800 liters) per day, but that there was never a single drop of beer left!
Still, much beer has flown through houses and kafanas until the concept caught on in other places in Serbia, mostly in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš. Thus about twenty so-called ”craft” breweries (”home manufacture”) were opened in the first decade of this century. Although they cannot compete with the big ones with their capacity, they are making excellent business, even exporting to the picky markets of Europe due to their quality.
Certainly, although it seems as an oxymoron, many have made a fortune on this beverage for the poor. As things are today, many will in the future… This can be concluded by the fact that there are more brewers’ associations, sections and clubs in Serbia today than beer producers.

***

Ingredients
Beer is brewed from barley (malt), water, hop and yeast. Its soul is barley, thus some call this beverage ”the liquid bread”. It’s the oldest and most resilient grain, which can be cultivated in climates other grains couldn’t. Hop, although used for food since the ancient times, is the youngest raw material in the millennia-long beer production. Our traditional medicine knew about its soothing features and recommended it for stimulating appetite. Beer yeast is the most famous ingredient in brewing, and the knowledge about its salutary features is as old as this beverage. The taste of beer is today adjusted with new ingredients, mostly of plant origin, according to the taste and requests of new beer-drinkers.

***

Bragging
Although it is believed today that the oldest Serbian brewery was founded in Vršac in 1702, this is not entirely correct. Not because manufacturers existed before it, but because Vršac, although mostly inhabited by Serbs, still wasn’t part of Serbia at the time. Furthermore, every brewery across the Sava and the Danube always brags about being the oldest, so it wouldn’t be easy to unravel.

***

With Beer on a Thousand Dinar Bill
Đorđe Vajfert (1850–1937) is a man whose face we see on our present thousand dinar bill. What did this Serbianized Schwab do to deserve it – except for being head of the National Bank for twenty-six years and then proclaimed lifetime honorable National Bank president by the royal government decree? There are several answers, depending on who gives priority to what, but the most interesting is the one that he deserved it because of – beer! Searching for fuel for steam engines used in his breweries in Pančevo and Belgrade, Vajfert discovered several bigger and smaller mine pits in Serbia, which significantly pushed the industrialization of the country! The Bor mine, Smederevo steel mill and Đorđe’s generosity should be mentioned as well.

***

Infringement
It is known that Vajfert changed his original German name Georg into Đorđe and that he signed only in Cyrillic letters. In spite of it, the new owners of the old Pančevo brewery named one beer after him, but printed the name on the label in Schwab Latin letters?! In present Serbia, where many start yelling for small things, no one has ever raised their voice against this obvious counterfeit and horrid infringement.