Alcohol-Free Things to Do in Burlington

Mesmer Kava is Vermont's first kava bar, opened in May 2025 by Gwen and Roderick Russell in Suite 109 of the Karma Bird House on Maple Street, a block from the Burlington waterfront. It serves traditionally prepared kava from the ground root of the South Pacific plant, plus kava drinks built with pineapple and ginger, herbal teas and kava-infused hot chocolate. Nothing on the menu contains alcohol, and it keeps genuine evening hours — 3pm to 8pm Wednesday through Saturday, from 4:30pm on Tuesday — which makes it the only room in the state offering a sit-down evening out with no alcohol in the building. Kava is mildly psychoactive, which the owners state plainly.

Citizen Cider presses cider from Vermont and New York apples at its Flynn Avenue press house, where the Press House Pub serves cider-inspired pub food, the full cider range, a bar and non-alcoholic options. Its alcohol-free product is The Clean Mayor, a genuine 0.0% ABV cider — the flagship Mayor dealcoholised and then blended with real ginger and lemon juice, giving it a lemon nose and a crisp apple finish. Co-founder Kris Nelson also helped develop Zero Gravity's Rescue Club non-alcoholic beer, which makes this one address responsible for two of the three alcohol-free drinks Vermont producers are best known for. Open from noon daily, to 9pm midweek and 7pm on Monday and Tuesday.

Devil Takes a Holiday is a dark, demon-themed cocktail lounge on St Paul Street in downtown Burlington, run by Taylor Watts, who styles himself Head Devil. Its alcohol-free drinks are printed as atonements — a standing section of the rotating menu rather than an off-list favour — and they are built the way the alcoholic cocktails are, from bases, shrubs and syrups the bar makes itself. Watts has demonstrated the approach publicly on Vermont Public, showing a spiced cranberry shrub finished with non-alcoholic sparkling wine and a hot buttered drink built on a cocoa-and-brown-sugar scrub. Open from 5pm most nights, 4pm on Friday and Saturday, with a Sunday afternoon service.

Doma Bar is a lesbian-owned and QPOC-operated cocktail bar on Pine Street in Burlington's South End Arts District, opened as a deliberate counterweight to venues that ask people to hustle, mask, perform and optimise. It keeps beer, wine and zero-proof drinks on hand at all times and runs a large non-alcoholic menu rather than a token pair of options — a policy choice that follows directly from the room's premise, since a bar built around belonging cannot make a third of its guests order soda. Open Tuesday to Saturday from 5pm, to midnight at weekends, closed Sunday and Monday.

The 126 is a downtown cocktail bar on College Street whose alcohol-free drinks are printed as Temperance Cocktails — a deliberate joke, each one named after a leader of the Temperance Movement that brought in Prohibition, including a Carrie the Hatchet built in tribute to Carrie Nation. The structural decision behind the section is more interesting than the naming: the bar makes every house syrup and every batch of bitters without alcohol, so any drink on the list can be built alcohol-free without substitution or compromise. Co-owner Emily Morton insists on the Temperance label over the word mocktail. Open Tuesday to Saturday from 5pm, closed Sunday and Monday.

The Venetian Soda Lounge is a 1920s-styled hideaway in Burlington's South End Arts District, built around a family soda recipe: Venetian Ginger Ale, a Burlington brand lost during the Second World War and revived in 2017. The lounge opened on Pine Street in 2022 and prints a full Zero Proof mocktails section — six drinks at $9 to $12, three of them built on CleanCo's alcohol-free gin and whiskey — alongside seven house-made craft sodas at $5, soda floats, creemees and milkshakes. It serves alcohol too, but it is the rare licensed room where the non-alcoholic side is the founding idea rather than an accommodation. Live jazz, low light, closed Monday and Tuesday.

Bar Renée is a natural wine bar and bottle shop on Main Street in downtown Burlington, pouring low-intervention wines from Vermont and further afield with no additives. Its list deliberately runs past wine into the adjacent categories — ciders, co-ferments and a curated selection of non-alcoholic drinks — which makes it one of the few places in the city where someone not drinking is choosing between several interesting bottles rather than between soda and water. Snacks run to charcuterie, local cheese, tinned fish, olives and almonds. Open from noon to 10pm most days and to 11pm on Friday and Saturday, closed Tuesday, and no reservations.

The Archives is a downtown arcade bar on College Street — vintage cabinets, pinball, a long craft beer list and a cocktail programme that is a good deal more considered than the format suggests. Hotel Vermont's guide to drinking in Burlington names it as one of two bars in the city making creative N/A cocktails, alongside Devil Takes a Holiday. It is also the most useful room in this guide for anyone not drinking, for a structural reason: it opens at noon at weekends and runs to 2am every night, and there is something to do with your hands that is not a glass.

Butter Bar & Kitchen is a neighbourhood gastropub in Burlington's New North End, well away from the downtown bar strip, serving burgers, fried chicken, salads and a full weekend brunch with espresso drinks and baked goods. Its ordering menu lists Mocktails as a category in its own right, printed alongside Specialty Cocktails rather than folded into the soft drinks — a small formatting decision that reliably signals a kitchen has actually built the drinks. It is one of very few options for a considered alcohol-free drink outside the city centre. Open Wednesday to Sunday evenings from 4:30pm, with brunch from 9am on Saturday and Sunday.

Honey Road is a women-owned Eastern Mediterranean mezze restaurant on the Church Street Marketplace, repeatedly recognised by the James Beard Foundation and generally regarded as the best restaurant in Burlington. Its drinks list carries a distinct N/A Beverage section alongside the cocktails, and the bar is set up to offer low-alcohol or spirit-free counterparts to the drinks it is known for — a barberry caipirinha, a turmeric-and-ginger gin build — rather than only what is printed. Hotel Vermont's own guide to drinking in the city singles it out for having several non-alcoholic options. Dinner runs 4pm to 9pm, seven days a week.