Dry January in Milwaukee: Where to Drink Alcohol-Free

What Dry January is, and what it is like in Milwaukee

Dry January began in 2013 as a public-health campaign by Alcohol Change UK, a British charity, after a volunteer trained for a half-marathon by giving up drink for a month. It has since become the largest alcohol-free event in the world, and the reason most bars now keep a zero-proof list at all: a month of genuine demand every January made non-alcoholic drinks worth stocking year-round.

January is the easy month to do this and the hard month to enjoy it. Everyone is out, nobody minds you ordering something soft, and the bars have their new menus in — but the weather is against you and the venues that shine are the warm ones: hotel bars, taprooms with a kitchen, bottle shops with seating. The places below skew that way, and several run dedicated Dry January menus or tastings that only exist in this month.

The practical warning for January is that a zero-proof list you read about in a magazine may not survive the month. Bars build these menus for the January rush, and a fair number quietly retire them in February when the traffic drops — which is why every venue here is checked against the bar's own current menu rather than copied from a seasonal round-up. If you are planning a big night, ring ahead: the alcohol-free menu is usually the first thing cut when a kitchen gets slammed, and the staff who know how to make the drinks are not always on the Friday rota.

One more thing worth knowing if this is your first January off: the fourth week is the one that catches people out, not the first. The novelty has worn off, the social invitations have not stopped, and the easiest failure is simply having nowhere to go. That is the argument for finding two or three places early in the month that you actually like being in — a room where the non-alcoholic order is normal rather than negotiated is worth more in week four than any single drink.