BKS Artisan Ales is living up to its name: Best of KC 2018

This month, we published The Pitch‘s annual Best of Kansas City issue. You can browse the results of the readers’ poll here. The issue also included a list, compiled and written by our editorial staff, of some our current favorite things about Kansas City in 2018. We’ll be publishing these items online throughout October.

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Local craft beer is hardly a novelty anymore in Kansas City (or anywhere else in the country, for that matter). A slew of breweries has opened here over the past 12 months. But even with all those shiny new options, we keep returning to BKS Artisan Ales. Brian and Mary Rooney’s Brookside brewery isn’t the most convenient for visitors (for now, it’s only open weekends during daylight hours), nor is it the best place to bring your book club (the taproom is wee). But the Rooneys are consistently turning out unique, high-quality beers to a committed fan base — which is all the more impressive when you consider that they’ve been open for less than a year.

There’s no one style that dominates here: our favorites range from the Holstein milk stout (the best locally brewed version of the style, bar none) to the refreshing Vacation Island sours (we still love the Cucumber Margarita) to the balanced and approachable Antithesis IPA. And as the business grows, BKS’s beers are getting even easier to love. The Rooneys added four-ounce pours to the menu so you can flirt with a flavor before you commit to a pint. They’ve beefed up their can and bottle sales, too — if you visit the brewery this month, you’re much more likely to be able to take home a four-pack of their flagship milk stout. There might be one of those in our fridge right now. We don’t expect it to last the weekend. We’ll be too busy toasting the first brewery to train us out of eye-rolling at “artisanal” beers.