The Giants were in the middle of their World Series run when two aspiring college baseball pitchers took an honest, but glass-half-empty, look at their futures in the game.
The Major League’s loss was a win for Bay Area beer fans: an Oakland-based brewery specializing in fruit juice and beer cocktails like radlers and shandies. It’s expanding to a new taproom in San Francisco later this spring.
Tommy Hester and Wilson Barr founded Two Pitchers Brewing Co. nearly 15 years ago, amid the heyday of the craft beer movement, motivated by the realization that their baseball careers had run their course.
The two young men had met as pitchers on the baseball team at Division III Williams College, a small, liberal arts school in northwestern Massachusetts that was established in 1793.
Two Pitchers Brewing Company co-owners Tommy Hester and Wilson Barr, from right, at their new location on Noriega Street in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. Their original location is on Webster Street in downtown Oakland. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
The Ephs – their mascot is a purple cow – are not exactly a baseball power, although they can claim notorious former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and former MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent as alumni. The school’s most accomplished professional player, Ted Lewis, retired in 1901 to teach full-time at Columbia University, and their most recent Major Leaguer appeared in one game in 1934.
Hester and Barr had modest careers with the Ephs but spent long hours in the dugout, cementing their friendship — and a plan to break into the craft beer business after college.
The pair proudly address their origin story on the brewery website, conceding that “we were better at brewing beer than throwing baseballs and didn’t have much hope of making it to the big leagues.”
Even as rookies, the pair quickly found their stride in the brewing game.
Barr first encountered radlers and shandies while studying abroad in Europe and wondered why the beverages weren’t more popular in the U.S. As novice brewers in a market saturated with craft IPAs, they knew they needed to offer something different to be competitive.
“We settled on this idea of doing craft radlers,” Hester says. “We figured we’d give it a shot and see where it went. And now here we are.”
After college, the duo moved to the Bay Area and launched their first beer in 2013, developed through trial and error, Hester says.
“It’s always the best part of the job,” he says. “We’d start mixing stuff, and we’d do samplings, but once everything started tasting good, we knew we’d probably had enough to sample and would start over the next day.”
Their creations include their flagship grapefruit blood orange radler, a lager base mixed with red and white grapefruit juice and blood orange juice. “It’s like sunshine in a can,” Hester says.
Co-owners and former Williams College baseball pitchers Wilson Barr and Tommy Hester, from left, are photographed at Two Pitchers Brewing Company in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
Other flavors include Nordic Jam, made with elderberry, strawberry and cherry juices, “almost like a fruit punch mixed with beer,” he says. Then there’s their Weekender, made with passionfruit, guava and citrus from mandarins and clementine oranges, and a lime-and-sea salt beer blend called Free Swim they’re planning to bring back after a limited release last year. Rather than the super low-ABV of traditional radlers, which hover around 2 or 3 percent, theirs are about what a standard light beer is, at around 5 percent.
They also developed the lager they use as their base beer, called the Baseline Lager (get it? It’s a baseball pun), which is available at their taproom for $3 a pint. The taproom also serves their pale ale and cider, and the bar’s selection is rounded out with guest taps from other local breweries.
“We want anybody to be able to come in and get an affordable beer. In a region that is lacking in affordability, we’re trying to put our money where our mouth is and make our spots approachable for just about anybody,” Hester says.
Since the start of their brewery, they’ve weathered ups and downs in the industry.
Back when they started, Hester recalls, “you just put the word IPA on the shelf, and it would fly.”
While IPAs are still a huge part of the industry today, some people are looking for other sipping options, including less hoppy ones, he says.
Today doesn’t feel like the boom days for craft beer anymore, Hester says. But they’re able to continue and do well.
As they expand to a new location in the Outer Sunset, expected to open in mid-March, they’re partnering with another former college baseball player, Max Ponzurick. Ponzurick, who played at Virginia Tech, runs Maillards, a smashburger fixture of the Outer Sunset farmers market. Maillards will be the food vendor at the new taproom, located at 3821 Noriega St. in San Francisco.
Additionally, locations will be a great place to watch Giants games.
Hester says he’s an Orioles fan, and Barr is a die-hard Giants fan, who “would be upset if we did not have all of those (games) on.”
Details: Open 4-9:30 p.m. Tuesday, 4-10 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 4-11 p.m. Friday, 2-11 p.m. Saturday, and 12-8 p.m. Sunday at 2344 Webster St., Oakland; twopitchers.com/oakland.