Three Notch'd Brewery & Craft Kitchen

Scott's Addition is Richmond's brewery district — a former industrial grid now dense with taprooms, cideries and distilleries — which makes it simultaneously the most fun and the most difficult part of the city to spend an evening in without drinking. Three Notch'd Brewery & Craft Kitchen, on West Broad Street at the district's edge, is the answer to that problem.

The brewery was founded in Charlottesville and has expanded across Virginia, and rather than treat non-alcoholic beer as someone else's product to stock, it brews its own. The Uncool line runs year-round, and the Richmond taproom pours it on tap as well as selling it cold from the fridge. The line includes a Low Cal IPA at roughly 40 calories, which is aimed squarely at the health-driven end of the category rather than the recovery end — a useful signal about who is actually buying non-alcoholic beer now.

Why this earns a higher grade than a taproom with a couple of imported cans: brewing your own alcohol-free beer is a real production decision. It occupies tank time, requires a different process, and only makes sense if a brewery believes the demand is permanent. When it is on draft rather than hidden in a fridge, a non-drinker in a brewery gets the ordinary experience — a glass poured from the same wall of taps as everyone else's — instead of the visible accommodation of a bottle handed over the bar.

The kitchen operates alongside, so this works as dinner as well as drinks, and hours run to 10pm midweek and 11pm on Friday and Saturday. It sits within walking distance of most of Scott's Addition, which makes it the sensible anchor for a group where only some people are drinking.