Not Lost Brewing Company | Ottawa, KS
Beer Trip: Not Lost Brewing Company in Ottawa, Kansas
It’s always great to find a hidden gem within a smaller community, and Not Lost is exactly that. Offering some great beer in historic downtown Ottawa (just about 40 minutes outside of KC), this brewery needs to be on your list to check out. This brewery screams “wanderlust” and with a logo featuring the forest and a compass, it’s “not lost” on us that coincidentally our first experience here was on our way to a camping trip!
Awesome historic building facade
Warren was excited for another brewery adventure
The Brewery
Not Lost is located in the heart of downtown Ottawa in a brick building likely constructed in the early 1900s. The inside is long and narrow with an L-shaped bar in the back. From the outside, the place doesn’t look very big - but once you step through the door you will find it’s quite spacious and features many tables and chairs. Some of the tables are old wooden barrels, which seemed to fit the feel of the place quite well.
Ample seating to accommodate a sizable crowd!
A couple of TVs to watch a big game
The walls are lined with canvas pictures taken of Kansas scenery by local artists, each one available for purchase. Near the bar area, they keep a stack of board games available for use. We brought Warren with us on this visit and he was quite fond of the large set of Connect 4 they had! If you’re more intentional about planning your visit, they also host a variety of events including trivia and comedy shows.
Barrel tabletops & game area
Warren enjoying Connect 4
Vaulted ceilings make this narrow space seem spacious
The Beer
The menu during our visit in April 2024
Not Lost maintains a nice selection of 10 beers, all neatly displayed on individual chalkboards as their menu on the back wall. During our visit, the brew styles were wide-ranging and included a porter, stout, sour, amber, and a few IPAs. We were informed that they keep their Regular Beer (a Kolsch) on tap at all times, as well as one varying flavor of their milkshake IPA. Other than those two, they constantly rotate the rest as they run out.
Coming here, we already knew they had good beer - we’ve had growlers filled while passing through on our way to go camping at Perry Lake! This latest experience reiterated this as we enjoyed some seriously solid brews. Their brewer does a nice job of utilizing varying fruits, hops, malts, and lactose (our kryptonite when it comes to beer) to create very flavorful beer.
Milkshake IPA
Paul’s Nitro Irish Stout
One of our favorites this visit was the Peach Pie Sour, which tasted exactly like a peach pie with only a subtle sourness to it. Paul’s Nitro Irish Stout was another top sampling and was reminiscent of a Guinness. Being on nitro, it was extremely smooth - this combined nicely with the coffee roast that came through. The last one worth mentioning is their milkshake IPA, which happened to be Strawberry Kiwi in flavor on this visit. We’ve had a few variations of this style where they utilize a base beer and add various fruits to switch things up. In addition to the beer itself being great, the unique flight boards at Not Lost are worth noting - made of wood, the boards are in the shape of various states - we got Kansas this go-around, which was fitting.
Always fond of a flight
Unique flight board in the shape of Kansas!
Food, Merch, & More
While you won’t find a full kitchen here, they still offer a rather nice snack selection of soft pretzels, chips and salsa, a hummus tray, and a charcuterie board. In addition to this, they allow you to bring in outside food or have local food delivered to the brewery. While you must try the beer, their specialty cocktail menu was quite tempting and was served very eloquently with various fruit toppings. If you’re wanting something non-alcoholic, we noticed a solid selection of flavored sodas as well.
Apparel options with some of the coolest design we’ve seen
Quality materials and SO soft
For a brewery of this size, Not Lost had a good variety of merchandise and some of the best-designed items you’ll find. They had a variety of glassware, hats, shirts, and sweatshirts, along with a couple of different sticker choices.
Custom glassware
Hats and glassware packs
Warren serving as an unofficial doorman
We appreciate family-friendly spots like this one!
