Last Best pizza and beer

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.

Tailgunner Brewing Company
1602 10 Avenue SW
Tuesday to Sunday opens at 11 am, Monday 3 pm
825-407-8599

Tailgunner Brewing in the Sunalta neighbourhood

This is a partnership between Tailgunner’s Czech-heavy beers and a 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.

A Trolley 5 10-incher to go

Cold Beer & Pizza
102, 1019 17 Avenue SW
Weekdays 11:30 am-10 pm, weekends 11:30 am-1 am
1-825-540-1434

Cold Beer & Pizza’s square slice

Okay, this retro 17^th 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?