Border Brewing Company

Border Brewing Company opened in 2015 at 512 E 18th Street, on the corner of 18th and Locust in the Crossroads, and founder Eric Martens is refreshingly unromantic about why: he built Border, he says, so he would have a place to drink with his neighbours. Ten years in, he still walks in some Saturdays and recognises half the patio, and calls that the only metric he actually cares about. A chemical engineer by training, he treats every recipe like a problem worth solving twice — which is the relevant detail here, because in December 2024 Border became the first locally owned Kansas City brewery to produce its own non-alcoholic beer. Startland News covered the launch, and Martens was direct about the difficulty: creating a non-alcoholic beer, he said, is no small feat, requiring precision, innovation and an in-depth understanding of brewing processes, regulations and testing. The brewery spent a year getting it right.

That line is called Baseline, and it runs to two beers, both under 0.5% ABV and both pouring year-round at the Crossroads taproom rather than appearing seasonally. Baseline Amber is the fuller of the two, built on rich caramel malt with a smooth backbone and subtle toasty notes. Baseline Pale Ale is hop-forward, carrying grapefruit and tropical fruit. Both are also packaged into 12oz six-packs to take home, and the distribution is real rather than notional — Baseline is poured at other Kansas City venues including KC Bier Co.'s Waldo bierhalle and Cliff's Taphouse in Martini Corner, which is a meaningful signal that other operators rate it enough to put a competitor's can on their own menu. For a non-drinker that makes Border one of the very few taprooms in the city where the non-alcoholic option is not an imported can from a national brand but something brewed in the same building as everything else on the board. The taproom opens at 4pm Monday to Thursday and from noon at weekends, with a patio the brewery calls The Backyard.