The Supraśl Brew

What this research found

In 2026 a paper in Archaeometry reported organic residues in Bell Beaker pottery from Supraśl in northeastern Poland — the oldest chemical traces of an alcoholic drink in the border zone of the North and East European Plains. This 12-page illustrated piece translates that residue chemistry into a plausible beverage and then into a working homebrew recipe, written for a reader who likes archaeology and brews beer. It is a narrative reconstruction built on published findings rather than new laboratory work.

• The residue fingerprint points to a grain base rather than a pure mead or wine. Azelaic acid alongside C16 and C18 fatty acids indicates hulled barley and emmer wheat, while vanillin points to kilned or floor-malted grain.
• Fruit, honey, and resin all register in the chemistry. Benzoic acid indicates wild raspberries, cherries, or sloes; levulinic and hydroxy acids indicate wildflower forest honey; and diterpenoid resin acids point to birch bark, pine resin, and bog myrtle.
• The fermentation was mixed rather than clean. Lactic and acetic acid imply Lactobacillus and Acetobacter activity alongside ergosterol fragments from wild Saccharomyces, putting the drink closer to a modern sour ale than to anything brewed with a single cultured yeast.
• The vessel sits in a funerary context at a site dated to roughly 2400 BCE, and the accompanying map separates ingredients available locally from the long-distance ritual paraphernalia that reached Supraśl through Bell Beaker exchange networks.
• The reconstruction lands as a 19-litre all-grain sour at about 4.7% alcohol by volume: kettle-soured with Lactobacillus, then fermented with a Saccharomyces and Brettanomyces mix over raspberry, cherry, honey, juniper, sweet gale, and birch. A simpler partial-mash version is given for brewers without the full setup.

How it was done

The 2026 Manasterski study of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry residues from Supraśl was read alongside site context from Januszek and colleagues and McGovern's work on Nordic grog, and each biomarker was then mapped to a candidate ingredient and to its modern brewing equivalent. That mapping became a 12-page narrative running from site context around 2400 BCE, through the vessel and its sampling procedure, the chemistry-to-ingredient table, and the trade routes, to a speculative tasting note and a twelve-ingredient recipe card. Seven illustrations were generated, among them reconstructions of a brewing day in Late Neolithic Podlasie and of the funerary libation itself, supported by 22 verified references.

Data sources

• Manasterski et al., Archaeometry 68(2):153 (2026) — organic residues in Late Neolithic Bell Beaker pottery from Supraśl, Poland
• Januszek et al., European Journal of Archaeology (2021) — Supraśl site context
• McGovern et al. (2013) on Nordic grog, used as the comparative case