On a recent sunny day in West Oakland, I celebrated two classic American summer pastimes: baseball and beer. Two breweries that pair excellently with Oakland’s newest professional baseball team, The Ballers — a.k.a. The B’s — are Brix Factory Brewing and Two Pitchers Brewing. (Make sure you catch a game next season!) Brix is just a few blocks from the B’s Raimondi Park, and Two Pitchers — you’ll see the baseball connection in a sec.
Brix Factory Brewing
At Brix Factory Brewing in West Oakland, co-owner Michael Boals, left, strikes a pose with Eric Ortega, the brewery’s “Human Swiss Army Knife.” (Courtesy Jay R. Brooks)
Open since March, Brix Factory Brewing is a newcomer to Oakland’s brewery scene, whose founders met while working at Drake’s Brewing Co. John Gillooly was the head brewer there, and brewer Michael Boals had used his engineering background to expand that brewery. They were joined at Brix by another Drake’s alum, Eric Ortega, who serves in the capacity of “Human Swiss Army Knife.”
Brix’s is housed in a large, former industrial space with high ceilings, two bars and two beer gardens. It’s a great location, although there’s a lot of construction nearby.
Gillooly keeps a dozen beers on tap, with a number of sessionable offerings that come in below 5-percent alcohol by volume. His best seller so far is Pinch Point, a 4.5% ABV American lager that’s nicely refreshing with clean, tart flavors. Other standouts include Worlds Collide, a 3.8% ale flavored with marionberries and loaded with fruit flavor; Rock Fall, a delightful 3.8% porter with chocolate and coffee notes; and Neoteric Lucidity, a rice pale ale bursting with malt flavor. I was also impressed by Cliffs of Amont, a French-style pilsner, brewed with French New Wave hops.
Brix offers snacks, but a new pizza parlor — the former pop-up, June’s Pizza — is expected to open next door by the end of September. In the meantime, Brix hosts frequent food trucks and pop-ups.
The brewery’s name comes from the brewing process: degrees brix is a measure of the dissolved solids in a liquid. These brewers chose it to emphasize the duality of brewing as both an industrial and artistic endeavor. Given how well they’ve done so far, it’s fair to expect even more in the future.
Details: Open 4-8 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, 3-9 p.m. Thursday-Friday, noon-9 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday at 2400 Mandela Parkway; brixfactorybrewing.com.
Two Pitchers Brewing
Bartender Amanda Stewart pours beers at Two Pitchers Brewing Company in Oakland. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group File)
Two Pitchers Brewing is just a couple of miles away in the former Torchio’s Auto Repair, which was built in 1919. Half the space is a baseball-themed taproom and half a substantial beer garden, with Lovely’s, their food partner, in back.
Inside, the high-ceilinged space is breezy and open. Art adorns the walls, and the eclectic seating includes comfy sofas and chairs, a corner booth and old theater seats alongside more standard tables and chairs. The front features roll-up doors, open on pleasant days, a foosball table and a shelf full of games. It’s a kid and dog-friendly spot.
The brewery’s name describes not only a vessel for serving beer, but a nod to founders Tommy Hester and Wilson Barr, who were both aspiring pitchers — the kind that throw baseballs — when they met on the bench of their college baseball team in Massachusetts.
If they had been better at playing baseball than talking about beer, they might not have started one of the only radler-focused breweries in the country. After graduation, they left their baseball careers behind, moved to California and started Two Pitchers in 2013.
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Rather than go a traditional route, they focused on making radlers, a drink created in Germany in the 1920s for thirsty bike riders — radler means “cyclist” in German. Originally a 1:1 mix of beer and lemon soda, radlers were lower in alcohol than standard beer and very refreshing, making them perfect for athletes.
Initially, Two Pitchers packaged their radlers for distribution to bars, restaurants and retail. By 2021, Wilson and Barr had opened their Oakland taproom and beer garden.
Two Pitchers’ radlers, unlike many mass-produced ones, are made with a base beer — their Baseline lager — and real fruit and natural ingredients, often unique ones. Their flagship Radler is fairly traditional, made with grapefruit and blood orange, but others are more playful.
Nordic Jam, one of my favorites, is made with cherries, elderberries and strawberries, while Disco Queen is akin to a bubbly rosé with hibiscus, white grapes and cranberry. Others include such unusual ingredients like coffee, guava and passion fruit. You can order a Baseline, a traditional American craft lager, too.
If radlers aren’t your thing, they also have their own dry cider, a large selection of natural wines and more than a dozen guest beers from local breweries, including Russian River, East Brother and Faction. They also offer two smoothies, Brass Monkey Slushie, made with their radler and grapefruit, lime, vodka and vanilla, and Soft as Snow Slushie, made with pineapple, spiced rum, Punt e Mes (Italian vermouth), lime and bitters.
Details: Opens at 4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and noon on weekends at 2344 Webster St.; twopitchers.com.
Contact Jay R. Brooks at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com.
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