Piel Bro’s East New York Brewery

Business Type: Brewery (NY 139 b,c)

Years of Operation: 1883 to 1973

Location: Liberty & Shefield Avenues, Brooklyn

Description: This brewery was founded by Gottfried Piel who came to the United States from Germany in 1882. According to The Breweries of Brooklyn by Will Anderson, Gottfried convinced his two brothers Michael & Wilhelm to come to New York as well. Together the three brothers combined their resources and bought a small existing brewery on Liberty Ave. in East New York, at the time the business was called “The Landser Brewery” but after changing hands was re-named “Piel Brothers” after the new owners. Piel’s remained a smaller brewing operation in it’s earlier years with a big portion of it’s revenue coming from the operation of a beer garden & restaurant up until 1911 when due to growth in beer sales the business decided to focus exclusively on brewing. Piel Bro’s continued to grow during the early 1900’s and when prohibition began they focused production on “near beer” to remain in business. Piel Bro’s was one of the few breweries in NYC to come out of the prohibition years strong and expanded production & operations quite a bit during the 30’s & 40’s. Perhaps the biggest period of growth for Piel’s came in the 50’s when the company began selling over a million barrels of beer yearly and also acquired the John F. Trommer’s brewing business. Piel’s began to run into issues of increased cost and decreasing sales during the late 50’s & 60’s eventually closing their Brooklyn plan in 1973 and selling the company name and satellite brewery branches to Schaefer.