For more than a decade, the National Westhills has been my go-to neighbourhood pub—even if it is located in a large southwest Calgary mall. It’s a bright, large but comfortable space for meeting friends and family, with an energetic staff contributing to the good-times vibe.
While lacking the intimacy of a brewpub, this beer “market” allows you to order draft pints from dozens of largely local breweries. It’s where I was introduced to Last Best’s fabulous Tokyo Drift double IPA, one of my favourite beers on tap.
While prices, as everywhere, have gone up, the happy-hour menu for drink and food remains extensive. Even at full price, my crispy chicken sandwich ($21 with fries) is a massive piece of breast meat barely contained by the potato bun.
A fabulous, meaty chicken sandwich
National Westhills 180 Stewart Green SW, Calgary Opens daily at 11 am, happy hour weekdays 2-5 pm 403-685-6801
There are many classic culinary pairings: bacon and eggs, burgers and fries, mac and cheese, peanut butter and jam. To this mix we can add beer and pizza, a longtime partnership that’s only getting stronger in Calgary as more craft breweries add gourmet pizzas to their pub food menus. So much so that you can go for the beer but stay for the pie.
Here’s a half dozen brewpubs that meet this high dual standard, sometimes baking their own pizzas and other times forging partnerships with existing pie companies.
Two House Brewing 1901 10 Avenue SW Sunday to Thursday 11 am-10 pm, Friday-Saturday 11 am-11 pm 403-287-0215
A couple of Two House pints
Tucked out of the way in Sunalta, Two House Brewing is the place to be on a sunny summer afternoon, with two spacious patios and big sliding glass doors. The eight types of pizzas keep flying out of the oven and go well with a flight of up to six beers. Prices are reasonable, with specials every day.
…and a couple of pies
Last Best Brewing & Distilling 607 11 Avenue SW and one other Calgary location Happy hour Monday to Saturday 3 pm-6 pm and late, Sunday all day 587-353-7390
Dirty Bird chicken pizza at Last Best Brewing
Talk about happy hour. Last Best offers at least five such hours every day—from $15 full-size pizzas to $5.50 16-ounce pints of beer to $10 martinis featuring house-made gin. I can sit by the pizza oven and watch my excellent Dirty Bird chicken pie bake or snag a seat on the sunny patio and sip a hazy double IPA Tokyo Drift, my favourite on-tap beer in Calgary.
Last Best pizza oven
Eighty-Eight Brewing 1070, 2600 Portland Street SE Opens daily, except Monday, at noon 403-452-5880
Replacing onetime in-house Noble Pies, 88 partner Portland Street Pizza features a unique, puffy focaccia crust and crispy squares. The beer, named in honour of the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, remains excellent. Enjoy a pint of hazy Hi-Fi IPA with a spicy Magnum P.I. pizza in the tropical, funky taproom.
Eighty-Eight Brewing’s funky taproom
’The Mash 50 Greenbriar Drive NW and four other Calgary locations Opens at 3 pm Monday and Tuesday and at 11:30 am Wednesday to Sunday
The Mash’s brewpub
Here’s something different: craft pizza made from craft beer. At The Mash—just outside Calgary Farmers’ Market West—the beer on tap is from Cochrane’s Half Hitch Brewing. The spent grain, from the beer-making process, is folded into the pizza dough.
The spent beer mash goes into the pizza crust
The result is uniquely flavourful pizza, such as a 10-inch wild mushroom ($20.50), paired with a Papa Bear Prairie Ale. No doubt worthy of a monster mash.
This is a partnership between Tailgunner’s Czech-heavy beers anda dozen Acme Pizza Co. 12-inch pies. Grab a seat on the shaded Sunalta patio and try an Ajax dark lager and a Saporita pizza. The brewery’s name honours local World War II tail gunner Lint Stephenson, who survived being shot down and spending two years in an internment camp.
Tailgunner beer and pizza
Trolley 5 728 17 Avenue SW Weekdays 11:30 am to late, weekends 10 am to late 403-454-3731
Trolley 5 is at the top of the Calgary brewpub food heap for its burgers, wings and brisket sandwiches. So it’s no surprise its 10-inch pizzas rank up there, too. Try the Silvio Dante—featuring house-made San Marzano tomato sauce and smoked andouille sausage—along with a Cloudy Daze hazy pale ale.
Okay, this retro 17th Avenue spot doesn’t actually make beer, but with a name like Cold Beer & Pizza, it’s hard to exclude it from this list. They do make plenty of flavourful pizza, ranging from a slice to pie sold by the metre. How about a Dirk Diggler quarter-metre “shorty” and a $5 happy-hour pint?
After railing last week about unhealthy restaurant breakfasts, I wondered what food and drink “vices” would be the toughest for me to give up.
Coffee jumpstarts my every morning
Number one, with a bullet, is coffee. A super-sized, super intense black coffee, produced with an Aeropress, jumpstarts my every morning, usually while I’m perusing the online news. Green tea would never be a replacement. And, it turns out, coffee is pretty good for you.
Number two is a tall can of beer, specifically a hoppy India Pale Ale, especially towards the end of a hot summer’s afternoon and most enjoyably shared on a patio with good friends. But I’ve discovered I can go several weeks without a brew. Just don’t see myself ever giving it up entirely.
The cure for whatever ales me
There’s nothing like a health scare to motivate a change in dietary habits. I used to polish off two or three bowls of ice cream in a single sitting, no problem. But when I was diagnosed with type two diabetes, I almost immediately dumped that binging habit. Haven’t had more than a few tastes of ice cream in the 20-plus years since. Same with desserts, chocolate, anything sweet. Don’t miss them.
Could you give up ice cream?
Enough about me. What would be the hardest “unhealthy” things for you to give up? A venti caramel macchiato? A pint of lager? A bottle of red? Two fingers of single malt? Dark chocolate? Eggs benedict?
Or artery-clogging eggs benedict?
Poutine? A Double Whopper? BBQ potato chips? THC gummies? Pepperoni sticks? A can of Pepsi? Peach pie with a scoop of vanilla? A stack of pancakes, dusted in icing sugar and swimming in butter and maple syrup?
Or a slab of mile-high pie?
Or maybe you have no intention of giving up these simple pleasures.
Lisa with all the gleaming new beer-making tanks at Olds College Brewery
For time immemorial, university students and the swilling of suds have been inextricably linked. So to actually get educational certification for sampling and making beer, well, who wouldn’t want to enroll?
Since 2013, Olds College, in central Alberta, has been making this student dream a reality with its two-year brewmaster program. Can you imagine sitting in a campus bar and someone asking what you’re studying? “Making beer, man.” “Yeah, right.”
Yet when you think about it, it may be the perfect program for turning out freshly-minted brewmasters, or apprentices, for all these microbreweries that keep popping up across North America. And what better place to do it than at a long-standing agricultural college surrounded by some of the world’s finest barley fields?
The program was nirvana for student Lisa, who had taken her love for microbrews on a cross-country beer-sampling tour, paired with her Littlest Beer Blog on the Prairie. In honour of International Women’s Day, she and other female students in the program have developed a hopped-up Calamity Jane Pale Ale.
It’s just one of half a dozen standard and seasonal beers that Olds College Brewery sells (in bottles, cans and growlers) in its little retail outlet, a few minutes west of the frenetic Highway 2 (QE 2), an hour north of Calgary. You can also find its products in some Alberta liquor stores, pubs and restaurants. My early verdict: Some decent beers but not yet threatening the best micro-brewmasters.
A growler of oatmeal stout and a six pack of mix-and-match bottles
I just have one question. Is it too late for me to go back to school?
Olds College Brewery
Corner of Highways 27 and 2A, Olds, Alberta
Monday to Saturday noon-6 pm. Closed Sunday
Beer doesn’t just come in bottles or pints anymore
In the beer-drinking world, many of us sophisticated types long ago evolved from the 24-packs of thin, flavourless piss to craft beers of all persuasions. Though sometimes things get a little carried away with the addition of fruits, chocolate and hot peppers. And don’t get me started on IPAs.
The chocolaty “breakfast” beer and the geek
The latest trend is the beer-tasting room, where you can stand, or sit at little tables, and savour small glasses (say, five or eight ounces) of beer, usually produced by an attached brewery. Perhaps the only food offered is from independent food trucks at the curb. Want some beer to take home? You’ll probably have to buy a refillable growler.
Vancouver, for instance, features two new tasting rooms. Brassneck Brewery (2148 Main Street) opened this fall with some eight beers to sample, while 33 Acres Brewing (15 West 8 Avenue) has two on tap. I recently visited the latter, which is a nice, bright place to sip a glass of 33 Acres of Life while chatting with friends. It felt more like a modern coffee shop (minus the laptops) than a prototypical pub. It’s all part of a craft beer renaissance in Vancouver, aided by the updating of antiquated liquor laws that allows the licencing of city tasting lounges.
Smaller glasses of onsite-produced beer at 33 Acres’ tasting room
Whether tasting rooms are your cup of beer is a matter of preference. Methinks that in big cities, it’s a trend that’s just getting started.
Road Food For Thought: What ever happened to those beer bottle openers in motel bathrooms? Don’t they know all these craft beers don’t have screw tops?
Why do most bottles of Canadian craft beers contain only 331 or 341 millilitres (11 or a little more ounces) of golden liquid, compared with 12 ounces for their American counterparts? The funny thing is, put the same Canadian beer in a can and you suddenly get 12 ounces (355 ml), often for less money. Go figure.
Blow the foam off the Canadian craft beer (right), and it’s an ounce short of its American cousin
Obviously, American beer has always been cheaper than Canadian suds. But the production and marketing of specialty brews down south has raised the price of some 22-ounce bottles to between $4 and $9 apiece. Guess they’re taking their cue from the specialty coffeehouses.
Marathon Mouth 