Last Best Brewing and Distilling is an eatery and brew pub that takes the notion of local identity to heart in the beers it pours and the food it puts on the plate. Its IPA and the Show Pony Pale Ale are familiar draft selections at pubs around town. However, a visit to the Last Best home base behind the conspicuous yellow door in the redbrick-and-sandstone building at the corner of Fifth Street and 11th Avenue Southwest offers craft-beer lovers a view of the fermenting tanks where it's made. In view of the brewing equipment, patrons quaff pints of Last Best's craftily named mainstay beers such as There Will Be Porter, Olsch Kolsch B’Golsch and Dirty Bird Black Lager.
“They’re not our beers. They’re the community’s,” says co-owner and beer philosopher Socrates Korogonas. Whether that’s the aforementioned on-tap staples or its ever-changing menu of seasonal craft beers, the approach is, in a sense, a collaboration between Last Best management, brewers and customers. The pub setting generates “an immediate feedback loop” between beer drinker and maker says Socrates.
“We really want to know what Calgarians appreciate, and if you are only going to give them one IPA, how are they going to know if they like another one better? We want to give them a lot of variety,” he explains from a stool at the expansive central bar. While he philosophizes, brewer Kyle Smythe tends to the fermenting tanks behind the glass on the opposite side of the restaurant-pub.
