KC Bier Co.

KC Bier Co. is Kansas City's largest locally owned brewery, founded in 2014 by Steve Holle, the great-grandson of German immigrants who studied German at Northwest Missouri State, attended the Doemens Brewing Academy in Munich in 1997, and earned a Diploma Brewer designation from the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in London in 2003. He retired from directing real-estate investment for Northwestern Mutual in Dallas in 2013 and came home to open the brewery the following year. He runs it with Bavarian native Jürgen Hager and head brewer Karlton Graham, trained at both the Siebel Institute and Doemens. The original home is the Waldo bierhalle at 310 W 79th Street, which serves communally in the German style with an adjoining biergarten explicitly described as a public place for people of all ages, including a designated dog-friendly area. Food is the appropriate accompaniment — Bavarian pretzels, bratwurst, currywurst, a döner kebab on Tuesdays only, and Betty Rae's ice cream. Brewery tours run Saturdays at 1pm and Sundays at 12.30pm.

The non-alcoholic offering is more considered than most breweries manage, and it takes two forms. The house option is Hop Spritz, KC Bier's own hop-infused sparkling water, which the brewery lists at zero alcohol, zero calories, zero gluten and zero carbs — the ingredients are simply sparkling water, dried hops, hop extract and natural flavours, and the tap list confirms it at 0% ABV and 0 IBU. It is poured from $3.50 for a 0.35L glass up to $8 for a litre, and sold in six-packs to take home at $9.99. What lifts this above a brewery that merely stocks something is the second option: the bierhalle also carries Border Brewing's Baseline Pale and Baseline Amber in 12oz cans at $5.25 — a rival Kansas City brewery's non-alcoholic beers, listed on the menu alongside their own. For a non-drinker that means a genuine choice between a hop water and two beers, all three of them made in this city rather than shipped in.