"Last Best West" was a campaign phrase used to market the Canadian Prairies to prospective immigrants during the late 1800s to the start of the First World War.

"The Laurier administration believed that this area was the Last Best chance in the modern world for homesteaders to lay roots and shape their futures," it explains on the Last Best Brewing and Distilling website.

"We think the accomplishments resulting from the first Last Best initiative have paved the way for the budding craft beer and distilling industries here in Alberta."

It's a good place to be in the beer business, as the province is surrounded by some of the best barley in the world.

The company is one of the newest breweries in the city, the fourth location in the Bear Hill Brewing family, which was started 11 years ago in Jasper by friends Brett Ireland, Socrates Korogonas and Alex Derksen.

The three have brought local community-focused beer culture to Jasper, Banff and Fort McMurray.

"Me, Soc and Alex all went to school together," Ireland said. "Our parents have known each other forever. My grandfather lived across the street from Soc's grandfather.

"After we all graduated, we had all worked in restaurants our whole lives, and Socrates won a house in Vancouver — one of those lottery houses — and so he sold it and bought a restaurant in Jasper."

Phil Bryan, now the brewery operations manager, met the others at a craft brewer's conference in 2013.

"We met in the back of a taxi, trying to find a bar that would serve us a beer after hours in D.C.," he said.

The friends went to help with the transformation, and being interested in the craft beer scene, got a deal on some equipment from the Okanagan and brought it up to Jasper to get started.

They seized an opportunity in Banff a few years later, and then in Fort Mac a few years after that.

The group also opened a brew-pub in Calgary in the space that was once Amsterdam Rhino. Their Calgary opportunity came after the past owner of Brew Brothers was ready to pass the torch.

"Luckily we had the right talent to jump on it ... when the restaurant space became available," said Ireland. "It was much more than we planned to take on, but we went for it, and it ballooned into this ginormous project we have now."

They intended to start small with a sort of test kitchen on the brewery side.

"Once we had a product to market, the week after that was when the two restaurants came available upstairs, so we took that on," said Bryan. "We were still making beer for the 14 months the site was under construction."

But they're not slowing down, with a new brewpub and their distilling program well underway. The friends planned to evolve into distilling even before the rules allowed them to.

"Based on our size, we didn't have the infrastructure or resources," Ireland said. "So we rolled the dice, anticipating that the Alberta government would change the rules. We had a distillery manufactured in Germany and had it sent to Fort Mac. The email came through during our AGM — news that the government released they were eliminating minimum production standards — so at 2 p.m. in the middle of our AGM we got permission to start making spirits. That was the end of the AGM."

They also tapped a designer who designs stills in Lethbridge, and had a more sophisticated operation installed here.

"We see a big future in the same way craft beer has a true, authentic story to it," said Bryan. "Using local ingredients, creating something magical — if you do it properly."

Under the direction of master distiller Bryce Parsons, they're working on mostly whisky and rum- or rye-based products.

"We have all kinds of ideas — using locally-grown potatoes and lots of things to do fun things with," said Bryan. "We're focusing on what's seasonal, what's local and what's endemic to Alberta so that other people begin to recognize that not only has this area of the world been producing the best barley in the world for generations, but now there's an industry there to support that."

Although it's a waiting game — as whisky takes three years — it provides an opportunity to plan and play and do more off the cuff stuff. For example, they have spirits aging with locally-foraged raspberries and spruce tips in their Fort Mac distillery.

Last Best has some unique brews besides their already well-known Show Pony pale ale and Dirty Bird lager. It's worth visiting their 11th Avenue location to try the smooth, nitro-injected caramel latte beer (made with 44 litres of Fratello coffee for each tank) and an imperial porter aged seven months in Jamaican rum barrels.

Their first ever bottled beer is being released this week, and you'll see it on liquor store shelves.

"It's big, it's bottled and it's a supercharged version of our regular Porter," Bryan wrote on his blog. "It's also the first release in our Lineage Bottle Series. We've been brewing in Calgary since March 2014, and we drank our first pints of Show Pony at National in April.

"Why it took us this long to do a bottled release is simple — we were being bloody puritans. Every brewer I know is somewhat guilty of it, and this Imperial Porter is damning evidence. It took us this long because of a stubborn credo: we want every bottled beer to get better with time."

Like their business, it's a marriage of craft brewing and craft distilling that keeps on getting better with age.