Red Sox legend ‘Youk’ took on beer as a second career

STORY BY JOHN METCALFE

PHOTOS BY DAI SUGANO

Many baseball players have second careers. Randy Johnson shoots concerts and African safaris as a professional photographer. Curt Schilling pursued video games, and David Eckstein teamed up with his wife to design sci-fi and comics-themed clothing for women.

For former Red Sox slugger Kevin Youkilis, it’s beer.

“I got to travel the country (as an MLB star) and just try di erent breweries,” he says. “When I got done with baseball I thought, ‘Hey, I don’t want to sit around all day. I’m looking to have a job.’”

Folks throughout the world herald “Youk” for his two World Series championships and for helping lift the Red Sox from their slump. But around Los Gatos, people also know him as the owner of Loma Brewing Company, where you can find him doing boss stu when he’s not hanging with his wife, Julie — sister of Tom Brady — or taking “coaching to another level” at Little League games. Baseball memorabilia isn’t plastered around Loma. The brewpub is understated in a way that, say, the Double D’s Sports Grille down the street is not. Youkilis and crew prefer to focus on their product, and so far that’s worked — Loma won the commercial brewery of the year award at the 2017 California State Fair and, with its restaurant and outdoor patio, draws crowds who seem only vaguely familiar with the owner’s pedigree.

“He’s one of the very few that has done a very good job” running a brewery, says Doug Constantiner, founder of San Diego’s Societe Brewing and guest on Youkilis’ web series, “Happy Hour with Youk!” “One thing that’s really stuck out to me is the amount of questions he asks and the type of questions, and then he just listens. All he does is, like, information gather.”

Ethanol might run in Youkilis’ veins. His great uncle was a Prohibition bootlegger who trucked booze for the Seagram’s founder from Canada to Ohio. And Youkilis’ physique certainly sounds like that of a suds guzzler’s, to judge from the rather uncharitable descriptions from baseball insiders during his career: “roly-poly,” “thicker-bodied,” “more a refrigerator repairman, a butcher, the man selling hammers behind the counter at the True Value hardware store.”

Dan Reineke, general manager at Loma, enjoyed plenty of beers with Youkilis when they played for the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. “But not good beer, that’s for sure,” Reineke says. “Cincinnati’s actually a cool, historically beer-centric town with German roots. It didn’t matter.”

“Anything that was a ordable and cheap,” says Youkilis. “Milwaukee’s Best, Natural Light, Little Kings — that was the worst one ever. Little Kings was a cream ale, and it was not good.”

Youkilis found a new appreciation of beer in Boston. “I started opening up my palate by going to a liquor store called Marty’s in Newton, Massachusetts,” he says. “They had beers from all over the country, a lot of West Coast beers, and that introduced me to IPAs and di erent and newer things that were coming about.” (Owner Marty Siegal doesn’t recall Youkilis tootling among the shelves but says he wouldn’t have recognized him anyway: “I just don’t watch baseball.”)

It was in Boston that Youkilis delved into making his own beer. “I homebrewed — once — with the current manager of the Minnesota Twins, Rocco Baldelli,” he recalls. “We homebrewed one IPA together, and it came out good. I’m big on statistics, so I was one for one and batting a thousand, so I stopped.”

Was making an IPA for a starter project di cult? “I just cleaned a lot and followed the directions, and it came out all right. I brought it in for a few guys to try, some trainers, and it was pretty cool. No one got sick, and no one died, so that’s a win.”

When Youkilis opened Loma with his restaurateur brother Scott, he was prepared. “He came in with all these great names of core beers,” says head brewer Justin Peck. “So we have Youks Kolsch, Greek God of Hops — which is a play on his old nick- name — and Jew-jitsu, which is also one of his original ideas, because he does jiu-jitsu and is Jewish.”

Above: Loma Brewing’s IPAs include one dubbed Jew-jitsu.

Right: From left, customers Jason Bottino, Eddie Aguilar, James Hanlon, and bartender Alex Maurer, have lunch at Loma Brewing.

Fans of Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball” will recognize the “Greek God of Walks” moniker, minted for Youkilis’ propensity to get on base. “I wish I could say I had” visited the brewery, says Lewis. “I only actually met him once, in the visiting clubhouse at the Coliseum, when he was on the Red Sox. Seemed like a great dude.”

Also on the menu is the cucumber-lime hard seltzer Cougar Juice. Youkilis was once connected with a 2008 energy drink called SlumpBuster, which happens to be a rude term for a woman a baseball player sleeps with to break a string of bad luck. Could Cougar Juice carry similarly risque undertones?

Not quite. “We’re in Los Gatos, so there are all kinds of cats and mountain lions around here,” says Youkilis. “And people are big into hard seltzer, so we’re just adapting and growing with the trends.”

Venture into Loma, and you’ll see display bags of small-batch co ee — another trend Youkilis has pounced on. Someday it might compete with Dunkin’.

“Co ee is something I’m doing personally on my own, because I don’t want to inundate my people too much with too many ideas right now,” he says. “The whole idea is to eventually move ‘Loma Co ee’ to the greater Boston and New England area. We’re looking for ways to connect with the community I got to play for and the fan base that was always so great to me.”

Loma tries hard not to be a baseball brewery, but that hasn’t kept the baseball players out.

“David Wells came here one time with Eric Byrnes. Nick Punto has been here and Kevin Frandsen. I’m trying to think of all the baseball players that’ve come through — Jay Gibbons? Jay Gibbons came through here,” Youkilis says. “Mitch Haniger comes in. We get a lot of 49ers coaches — oh, Shawn Estes came in here — and a lot of 49ers front-o ce people.”

Youkilis has avoided any career-ending injuries at the brewery like dropping a full keg on his foot. “Yeah, that’s not happening,” he says. What has been devastating to business is the pandemic. “It’s been so stressful the past two years, I think I’d rather go back and face sliders.”

But he has a bright vision for the future and plans to open a new brewpub and production facility next year in Manteca, where he’ll perhaps help start a company softball team.

“When we get to Manteca, we’ll put a team together for sure, because we’re across the street from one of the best softball facilities in the state (Big League Dreams),” says Reineke.

“Kevin won’t play,” he adds. “I’m out. I’m out,” says Youkilis.

Details: Loma Brewing Company, 130 N. Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos; 408-5609626, www.lomabrew.com