(From left) Crazy Rooster Brewing Company co-owners Jason Miller and Tim Torrez (Photo by Jay Paul)
After winning a gold medal this year at the Virginia Craft Brewers Guild’s Craft Beer Cup for its saison Touche de Gris, Powhatan’s Crazy Rooster Brewing Company is gaining a heady following. Located at 1560 Oakbridge Drive, the bucolic brewery is home to a sudsy lineup that offers a bit of everything. We recently spoke with co-owner Jason Miller, who can often be found rocking a tie-dye T-shirt and humming a Jerry Garcia tune, about the origins of Crazy Rooster.
Richmond magazine: What’s your background?
Jason Miller: I’ve lived in Richmond since ’99. I grew up in Harrisonburg and moved here to work at a local environmental engineering company, which is where I met my partner, Tim Torres, our other owner. I had been enjoying the growing craft beer scene in the Richmond area and frequenting breweries and had picked up homebrewing. I was thinking of a career change, and on Dec. 31, 2016, I was driving through Goochland County, and something about driving through the countryside that day, I thought, “Why not open a brewery?”
RM: When did the brewery officially open?
Miller: We opened on April 18, 2020. At that time, we had a temporary certificate of occupancy, so we could do limited work in the building and start brewing beer. We pivoted [at the beginning of the pandemic], ordered a bunch of cans, whipped up a label — if you look at the original label, it’s a black-and-white one I made in Microsoft Publisher — and did curbside service. We thought a few people would show up, and hundreds came, and we canned beer for 10 hours straight until we ran out of labels. We opened the tasting room in June of 2020.
RM: What style of beers has Crazy Rooster become known for?
Miller: Right from the get-go, our plan was to make a range of approachable beers and not focus on one specific style, so that anyone who comes into our tasting room can find something they’ll enjoy. Our No. 1-selling beers are a hazy IPA called Late Day Shadow and the Oakbridge blonde ale that people drank so quickly that we have brewed it probably 10 times since. We have 12 taps, so six flagships and six seasonal offerings. Coming up, there’s a seasonal brown ale, Uptown Toodeloo, that a lot of customers look forward to.
RM: I know that you have been vocal about advocating for brewery self-distribution. Can you tell us a little more about those efforts and why it matters for smaller breweries?
Miller: The way it works now, the state has a three-tier system: the manufacturer, distributor and then the retailer, and you can’t skip one to get to the other. We can sell cans and kegs and pour out of the tasting room, but if we want to sell to another business such as a grocery store, we have to go through a distributor, and it does present some challenges for us. This idea of creating an opportunity for brewers to be able to do self-distribution, even if a limited amount, will give us the opportunity to really get more beer out there and expand our markets. I can load up a couple kegs and drive to the far reaches of Virginia without having limitations put on any distribution.
RM: What inspired the name of the brewery?
Miller: I’m an old Deadhead, and I wanted that to be a part of the brewery. The name Crazy Rooster comes from the song “The Music Never Stopped,” and the line goes, “Crazy rooster crowin' midnight / Balls of lightnin’ roll along / Old men sing about their dreams / Women laugh and children scream / And the band keeps playin’ on.”
