The next of our beerventures brought us back to an old stomping ground for a friend’s birthday, which was conveniently planned as a brewery tour in NYC.
LIC Beer Project (Long Island City, NY)
The first stop of the day was LIC Beer Project, in you guessed it, Long Island City. Now, we are bad fake New Yorkers and so instead of relying on public transportation, which is horrible, we drove from Manhattan to LIC. We don’t recommend this strategy, but it works if you know how to drive NY. We arrived before the rest of the birthday bunch showed up, grabbed a table and headed to the bar. When we visited Queens last time, we missed LIC Beer Project so we were glad for an excuse to go back. LIC Beer Project is a spacious brewery (for New York standards) and it unfortunately does not serve flights so we were forced to choose which ones we would like tasters of.
With our best NY third wheel in tow, we grabbed a SAMO, Dutch Kills and Ardent Core for round one and Trigger Rye, Cannons and Primrose for round two.
- Ardent Core- Hopped up saison and Andrews favorite.
- Dutch Kills- Traditional, sweet kolsch and my favorite in flight.
- SAMO- 7% juice bomb that was the better of the two IPAs we had.
- Primrose- Belgian blond, some funk and tart.
- Trigger Rye- Rye saison that didn’t have enough rye taste to it.
- Cannons- DIPA with cascade, simecoe, centennial and amarillo. Overall it was a decent DIPA, but the abv overpowered the actual hop flavor. In a choice between SAMO and Cannon, go SAMO.
LIC has some good beer and a large environment that makes it great for medium to large groups. And did I mention there is a brewery cat? LIC earned a must visit 4 out of 5.
Big aLICe Brewing (Long Island City, NY)
Next on the list was Big Alice Brewing. We had really enjoyed our last trip to Big Alice and were eager about returning. The brewery itself is a cozy space with only a few tables and bar tops to set down drinks. What is impressive about this facility is the sheer amount of beer they have on tap; 14 drafts! And it comes in flights so somehow we were really aggressive and decided to order it all. Being in a group of 5 now, it was more than enough to share right?
Our favorites of Big Alice were Jalapeno Rye, LIC Native Coffee Pale, Queensbridge IPA, and Sour One. Jalapeno Rye is not as spicy as you would imagine! Instead the the heat is masked by full jalapeno and rye flavor with only a hint of spice. LIC Native Coffee Pale is one of those tricky beer that tastes like a stout but is actually a flavorful, coffee pale. We’ve encountered a few of these over the years, and they’re really hit or miss, love or hate. This one was certainly a hit and we loved it.
Queensbridge IPA was Andrew’s favorite of the flight for obvious IPA reasons. I also appreciated it due to the lychee flavor that made it more drinkable than the average IPA. Lastly, Sour One was the best sour in flight (of 3) and it made the list because it wasn’t overly sour nor did it produce an off taste in the backend.
Big Alice has a big flight and an expansive range of styles. Like many breweries that strive to please everyone, a good portion of the flight was average and only a handful truly shined. We give Big Alice a 3.75 out of 5.
Transmitter Brewing (Long Island City, NY)
Our last stop of the beerventure was Transmitter Brewing, a self described urban farmhouse brewery. We had left the group at this point because more beer was calling us and Andrew’s grandma’s birthday dinner was fast approaching. Another brewery without flights, but in this case you also had to buy an entire 750 mL bottle! Good news is that you can taste a few options before you buy but not everything bottled was available to taste.
W1 Wit Ale, F4 Brett Farmhouse Ale, PH3 Blood Orange Sour and F1 Brett Golden Ale were all available for purchase so we bought one bottle of PH3 and traded rounds with other tables to acquire a small pour of the W1, F4 and F1.
- W1: is a Witbier that focuses heavy on pilsner, grapefruit, black pepper and coriander. The grapefruit and coriander definitely showed up strong on the front end.
- F4: Brett saison was as farmy and funky as you might imagine it should be. Untapped claims there were three Brett strains in the primary, and we don’t doubt that.
- F1: A way less funky saison, that was mild by comparison to the F4. If you had to pick one, you should go with the F4.
- PH3: The best option of the day. The blood orange was sweet and sour, but not overly sour; just the right balance.
Transmitter Brewing is a small brewery that will work for groups of no more than 6, and the patrons are friendly enough that sharing bottles seems to be a common occurrence. The bathroom on “premise” is one building down and up a sketchy abandoned office building and thats just kind of weird. We received 3.85 transmissions out of 5.
