The three Piels brothers came to Brooklyn from Germany and opened their eponymous brewery in the hinterlands of East New York in 1883.
They couldn’t have imagined that their beer—made with the preferred “soft” water native to Long Island—would be a hometown lowbrow (to put it mildly) favorite for the next 90 years.
[A Piels coaster from the 1950s. Less what? Non-fermented sugar.]
“Piels was selling about a million barrels a year in the mid-1950s, hardly a major player but still prized across the Northeast as one of those lower-end, popularly priced regional brands whose market had always been the working classes,” reports a New York Daily News article from 1998.
Part of Piels appeal were its popular Bert and Harry commercials. When the company dropped the campaign, the beer’s popularity plunged too. After taking over a few other local breweries, Piel’s sold itself to a Michigan brewer and bid Brooklyn good-bye in 1973.
Tags: beer in New York City, Bushwick breweries, cool beer ads, East New York, New York City breweries, Piel's Brewery, Piels beer, R&H brewery Staten island, Schaefer beer, vintage beer coasters, vintage beer commercials
Ephemeral New York 
September 6, 2011 at 1:59 am |
Weren’t the popular, droll, radio comedy team of Bob and Ray the voices of the Piel Bros?
September 6, 2011 at 2:08 am |
Yep–here’s a pretty good wiki entry about them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_and_Ray
September 7, 2011 at 11:19 pm |
Before becoming a teetotaler, Jimmy Breslin made a TV ad for Piels, who’d already left Brooklyn. “It’s a good drinking beer.” Sounded more like a consolation than an endorsement.
I think Schaefer was the last of the big New York breweries to close.
September 10, 2011 at 2:09 am |
interesting link to the piels website. there, the beer is described as
“Satisfying but not satiating”. so, you can never get enough of it?