Mean Mule Distilling Co.

Mean Mule Distilling Co. is an agave-spirits distillery and tasting room at 1733 Locust Street in the Crossroads, and it began the way the best small distilleries do — Jeff and Meg Evans spent a summer break teaching themselves to distil in their garage, using a still they had built themselves. The brand launched around 2016 and the public distillery and tasting room opened on 12 April 2019, with Jeff as chief executive and head distiller, Meg as chief operating officer and Patrick Little handling brand and marketing. The distillery describes itself as family-operated and woman-owned. It makes agave spirit in Missouri rather than importing it, which is unusual enough on its own, and the tasting room is built around cocktails made with what is distilled on site. Beverage director Amy Connor now runs the drinks programme, and The Pitch was still covering new seasonal cocktails there in spring 2026.

A distillery tasting room is not an obvious entry in a non-alcoholic guide, which is exactly why this one is worth knowing about: Mean Mule keeps five custom-made mocktails alongside the agave list, built with the same house ingredients rather than poured from bottles. KCUR picked out two when mapping the city's zero-proof options. Pickle's Punch leads with the punch of the distillery's own house-made red pepper syrup, mixed with cactus brine, ginger beer and lime — savoury and briny, and about as far from a sweet mocktail as a drink gets. Kleopatra is the aperitif of the pair, built on Ghia's non-alcoholic spirit with a syrup made from almonds and ube. Both are made in house by the same team making the cocktails, which is the distinction that matters in a room like this. Two honest caveats. The tasting room's website does not publish its menu in readable form, so the current mocktail list cannot be checked in advance and the two drinks above were documented in 2023 rather than this season. And the venue's own award claims carry no named awarding body, so treat those as marketing rather than verified recognition.