Big aLICe Brewing is the last of the three Queens based breweries I visited this summer. I’m fond of this company because of it’s name, which evokes one of my favorite Queens landmarks, the Big Allis Power Station. Also, they cleverly capitalize the LIC in aLICe to signal their home neighborhood in Queens, known as Long Island City.
Big aLICe has a unique distribution method among local breweries. It is based on the existing idea of Community Supported Agriculture, in which customers sign up for a regular subscription of locally produced vegetables and such from small local farmers. Well, Big aLICe is a Community Supported Brewery. When I visited, they had sold out all of their subscriptions, but you could buy an individual bottle, which I did and is shown below. It’s just as well, as much as I enjoyed my mini-tour through Queens breweries, I do not drink nearly enough beer to justify getting a subscription, but I’m delighted that the system seems to be working for Big aLICe and its customers.
* The first Queens brewery I visited was Rockaway, followed by SingleCut. There is a fourth Queens brewery, Bridge and Tunnel, which I could not visit because it is based in the owner’s back yard. They do show up at the occasional fair or other events so I should catch up with them eventually.
Michael Criswell
14 Sep 2013Great post Mark, always nice to see these local breweries, how was the beer?
Mark
16 Sep 2013Hey Mike. The beer was good. This company does a lot of small batches of many different varieties. Faced with so many choices, i think I choked and picked something out of my taste preference but the quality was definitely there.