New Oakland brewery focuses on fun, low-alcohol beers

John Gillooly, co-owner and brewer of West Oakland’s new Brix Factory Brewing, had one theme that he kept coming back to, “beer is for everyone”.

“There shouldn’t be a barrier to entry,” Gillooly said. “You shouldn’t have to understand esoteric lager styles from the 19th century to enjoy your beer. It should just fucking taste good.” 

That’s the philosophy Brix Factory was founded on. Gillooly and his co-owner Michael Boals met in 2014 at Drake’s Brewing Company, where they were both brewers. They’ve been plotting to open their own place for a while, and the work to launch Brix formally started in 2021. One of their motivations was to run a smaller operation where they had more control over the process and interaction with customers. 

“I love being able to just make beer and sell it directly to people who walk in the door,” Gillooly said.

Their current team of four also includes Kira Gillooly, John’s daughter, as taproom manager/social media coordinator and Eric Ortega whom Gillooly called their “human Swiss army knife.” The four have worked collectively at ten different breweries around the Bay Area.

I stopped by Brix the day before their hard opening on Friday, March 1. The space has lots of light and is sparsely decorated—a fact that Gillooly said has gotten mixed reactions from guests. Some people have been telling him to hang more stuff up, while others say they are enjoying the minimalist aesthetic.  

“So I’m just kind of rocking on that one,” Gillooly said. “I love the light. A lot of people gave us a lot of just good props for just how everything looks and how it all came together.”

Gillooly said that due to it being “a weird time in the industry” with lots of places shutting down while others expand, they were able to get a lot of their equipment as hand-me-downs. Their tables came from Harmonic Brewing, which closed in San Francisco. The brew house was available from LA Ale Works thanks to its expansion. This collaborative mindset also applies to their brewing. Gillooly recently bought two boxes of hops from their neighbors, Ghost Town Brewing.

“I have this whole farmers market approach now,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, these hops are cool. I guess this is what I’ll make with it’.” 

Brix has already declared itself a “people-friendly dog brewery” because of the number of dogs that stopped by during their soft opening, a point proven by their Dogs of Brix Instagram account. During their hard opening weekend the first weekend of March, they also had a cat stop by.

“That cat tripped us out,” Gillooly said. “He was there for like two hours. He just sat there and was just real good.” 

There were no cats there when Gillooly and I sat down for the interview at one of the many tables in their airy brewery. He pointed out the many plugs along the walls and their wifi, adding that people should come by to work. 

Gillooly gave me a taste of the Pop Art beer, a 4.2% fruited ale with blackberry, marionberry, and pomegranate. He described the taste as akin to a La Croix. 

“I’m trying to deliver amusing beers and fun things to drink. I’m working on a much lower ABV scale for the most part,” Gillooly said. The list of beers on tap opening weekend ranged from 3.8 to 6.5 abv. 

Gillooly said he likes making low-abv (alcohol by volume) beers because it’s a bit of a fun, technical challenge as they can be hard to make while still delivering robust flavor. But there’s a simpler reason too. “I like drinking beer,” he said.

While he does focus on a specific style sometimes, like the West Coast IPA he made for an SF Beer Week event, normally Gillooly is more focused on the fun of it, never wanting to make the same beer twice.

“Even if I like a beer, if I re-brew them I’ll tweak them a little bit,” Gillooly said. “I just like being able to play around and being able to make fun beers.”

He wants to get someone to spray paint “No Styles, No Masters” on the wall in the brewing area of the building to emphasize this philosophy that styles don’t matter. 

This fun approach to the beer has also translated into their beer art. Gillooly has a fascination with warning signs and has chosen them as a theme for the beer label art. The Eye of Tazman, the New Zealand Pilsner, is an eyewash warning station label that now represents both Tasman Bay where hops are grown in New Zealand and the Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings. He’s going to brew a porter soon with a rockfall warning sign, which he said he’s doing for the climbers next door at Pacific Pipe climbing gym. His west coast IPA is marked with a tsunami warning sign. 

“I think the warning signs are super cute. People see them in their regular lives, but don’t really notice them,” Gillooly said. “I always got a kick out of them. Some of them are so ridiculous.”

Brix Factory is open Thursday through Monday, and they’re ready for people, and their pets, to stop by. June’s Pizza is also planning to open next door to the brewery by summer of 2024.