Gravity Bound Brewing Co.

Gravity Bound Brewing sits on Central Avenue in downtown Albuquerque, and it is in this guide for one item on the board: hop water.

Hop water deserves a proper explanation, because it is the most quietly useful thing in alcohol-free drinking and most people have never been offered one. It is carbonated water run through hops — the same hops that give an IPA its aroma and bitterness — with no alcohol, no sugar, no malt and effectively no calories. What that produces is a drink that smells like beer and tastes bitter and resinous, with none of the sweetness that makes most non-alcoholic beers heavy going after two.

That last point is the one that matters over an evening. Sweetness is what defeats the average mocktail: the first is refreshing, the third is exhausting. Bitterness is the opposite — it resets the palate and invites another. Hop water is the only widely available alcohol-free drink built entirely around bitterness, which is why it works in a brewery, over three or four hours, in a way that a fruit-based mocktail does not.

This directory has now recorded breweries making their own hop water in Bend and pouring it in Albuquerque, and it is a strong signal in both places: it means the brewery has thought about the person at the table who is not drinking rather than assuming they will have a soda.

Graded three honestly. One documented alcohol-free option, no non-alcoholic beer line of the brewery's own confirmed, no printed zero-proof section.

The hours are good: 4pm to 9pm Monday, 3pm to 10pm Tuesday through Thursday, 2pm to 11pm Friday, noon to 11pm Saturday and noon to 9pm Sunday. Seven days, no closed day, and a downtown location within reach of the Old Town cluster.