Rheingold Beer Vat Reclaimed Wood Furniture for environmentally-friendly gifts and collectible home decor

Rheingold Vat Reclaimed Wood Furniture Gallery, featuring our Rheingold Vatwood Sideboard and other fine furniture items

Clarner Woodworks, fine handmade furniture

Rheingold Vat Reclaimed Wood Furniture

Clarner Woodworks has obtained a limited supply of Rheingold Vat Wood, a collection of reclaimed old growth cypress wood and redwood that was once fermentation vats at the Rheingold Brewery in Brooklyn, NY. This tight-grained wood dates to the late 1800's and is an extremely durable and attractive wood. It is also historically important and environmentally friendly. Considering these attributes and its limited supply, Rheingold Vat Wood makes a unique and highly desirable choice for furniture-making, environmentally friendly gifts and collectible home decor.

Featured in the Winter 2005 edition of BKLYN Magazine, this Rheingold Vat Reclaimed Wood was recognized for its historical significance:

"...Vermont furniture maker [Doug Clarner] managed to save the remains of the old Rheingold Brewery from obscurity. Built in the late 1800's, the once-famous suds factory stood at the corner of Forest and Bremen streets in Bushwick until it closed in 1976. Clarner's friend, fellow Vermonter George Hayes, was an entrepreneur who was drawn to a deal: All the gorgeous old-growth cypress and redwood from Rheingold's 168 gigantic beer vats was for sale. Hayes jumped at the opportunity. "And then the problems started," he says. "Nobody would buy it. Unfortunately, I think we were about 25 years ahead of our time when it came to recycled lumber." Hayes managed to sell some of the salvage. He used the rest to build three houses -- and a friend's pigpen. When Clarner heard that, he was speechless. Clarner reclaimed the barnyard structure, along with all the remaining wood, and is now fashioning it into custom-made sideboards and storage towers -- pieces that could easily be put back to the wood's original beer-holding purpose."

History of Rheingold Beer

In 1850, Joseph Liebman, son of German brewer Samuel Liebman, purchased a small brewery in Brooklyn, New York when he emigrated from Germany to escape political persecution. As the rest of his family, including his father and two brothers, emigrated to America, they continued the family brewing tradition. They soon out grew the original brewery and built a new one on the corner of Forest and Bremen streets in Brooklyn. They were successful in the New York City beer market, largely due to their ability to obtain the best hops available for brewing (due in no small part to the marriage of Joseph's son to the daughter of the best hops merchant in the United States, himself also a German immigrant). Eventually, the Liebman family built the business into what would become one of New York's most popular beers. Rheingold Beer was known as 'New York's Beer', and at it's height in the 1940's to 1960's, Rheingold Beer had a 35% share of the beer market in New York City.

With the emergence of the large national breweries, Rheingold Beer declined and remained dormant as a brand until the late 1990's. In the last few years, under the direction of a new president, Rheingold Beer has successfully been making in-roads into the New York City market, and is once again looking to be 'New York's Beer'. It's positioning as an authenic, high-quality, classic beer has been key to it's recent resurgence and success.