Arizona Wilderness Brewing — DTPHX

Arizona Wilderness Brewing was founded in 2013 by Jonathan Buford and Patrick Ware, and within months of opening a small brewpub in Gilbert it was named Best New Brewery in the World by RateBeer. What it became known for afterwards was less the beer than the water. In a state where drought is the permanent condition, the brewery built its whole identity around consumption — brewing with Arizona-grown Sinagua Malt, and converting an alfalfa farm to malt production in a switch that saves an estimated 100 million gallons a year that would otherwise be drawn from the Verde River. The company slogan, "Drink Like You Care", is the argument rather than the decoration.

The downtown Phoenix pub on Roosevelt Row is where that programme meets a bar. The reason it belongs on a non-alcoholic directory is specific and rare: this is a brewery that makes its own alcohol-free beer instead of buying in a national brand for the fridge. ARIZO[NA] is billed as the state's first non-alcoholic IPA — bright citrus, real bitterness, a dry finish rather than the sweet flatness that afflicts a lot of NA beer — and 2 percent of its sales go to the Arizona Trail Association each year. Alongside it the taproom pours Wild Water, a zero-proof sparkling water hopped with El Dorado and Mosaic, which scratches the same itch without pretending to be beer at all.

That combination matters in a taproom setting more than almost anywhere else. A brewery is the hardest room in which to not drink — the entire social ritual is a flight of the thing you are declining — and being handed a house-brewed pint that the brewers are proud of rather than a can from the bottom shelf changes the evening completely. It remains a working brewery with a full beer list, so this is not an alcohol-free venue; it is a venue where not drinking costs you nothing.