The Ball & Biscuit

When The Ball & Biscuit opened at 331 Massachusetts Avenue in June 2010, Indianapolis did not really have a craft cocktail bar, and the city has spent the fifteen years since treating it as the one that started things. It was a side project for Trevor Belden, a local attorney, built with bartender Zach Wilks — who went on to found the Wilks & Wilson syrup and bitters company, a line you still find behind bars across the Midwest. The name comes from the 1930s ribbon microphone that everyone called the ball and biscuit, and original mics and studio gear hang through a narrow, dark room that runs to brown spirits, pre-Prohibition classics, old-school DJ nights and serious charcuterie.

The zero-proof program is the part that matters here, and it is not decorative. Seven named non-alcoholic drinks sit on the same menu as the cocktails, priced and built with the same components. The Spritz AF layers Lyre's Italian Orange and Lyre's Aperitif Rosso over lemon and orange juice and lengthens it with Fre non-alcoholic sparkling brut; the New Fashioned is a straight-faced alcohol-free reading of an old fashioned; The Whole Garden is the floral one, built on zero-proof brut; and the Twist of Fate runs ginger syrup and basil concentrate against lemon and club soda. The bar will also add CBD or delta-8 to a drink for a small upcharge, which is worth knowing in advance if you are avoiding psychoactives as well as alcohol — it is an opt-in, not a default. Hours run late for the neighbourhood, to midnight Sunday through Thursday and 2am on Friday and Saturday, and Mass Ave puts three other venues on this list within a five-minute walk. The wider point is that Ball & Biscuit is the closest thing Indianapolis currently has to a bar that would satisfy someone used to a dedicated alcohol-free room. Since Memento Zero Proof shut in Fishers in 2024, the city has had no fully alcohol-free cocktail bar at all, and the zero-proof depth has migrated into ordinary bars — which means the question is no longer where the sober bar is, but which bars have actually done the work. Seven named builds, a Lyre's and Fre backbone, and fifteen years of bartending culture behind them is as close as the city gets. Expect a loud, dark, shoulder-to-shoulder room at weekends; a Tuesday visit is a different bar entirely.