Jason's passion has always been good times. The music that fills a room, the people who gather around a table, the moments that feel worth raising a glass to. For most of his life he chased that feeling in different directions. It took him longer than most to realize that beer was how he was meant to share it.

Born in Arcadia and raised in Whittier, Jason was a beer guy long before he ever brewed a drop. But growing up, his first love was music. One afternoon he came home from water polo practice, still worn out from the pool, and flipped on MTV. There was Slash, cigarette hanging, top hat low, tearing through a solo like nothing else in the world mattered.

That was all it took.

Jason poured himself into music with the kind of devotion that would come to define everything he did. He played, he practiced, he pushed. And years later, the kid who had been stopped cold by a music video found himself on the same bill as his hero, opening for Slash.

Through it all, Jason carried a simple belief. The people he admired most were the ones who tried to leave the world a little better than they found it. It was an idea that would follow him long after the music faded.

When Jason stepped away from music, he took a path about as far from the stage as he could get. For ten years he worked in finance as an investment advisor. It was steady, respectable work, the kind of career plenty of people spend a lifetime in.

Then, at 40, he looked at himself in the mirror and saw the truth. Finance wasn't for him anymore.

So he walked away. He picked up a hammer and spent the next couple of years swinging it, working with his hands and letting the noise of his old life settle. It wasn't a detour so much as a reset, a chance to clear the slate and figure out what came next.

The answer showed up wrapped under a Christmas tree. That holiday, his wife's kids gave him a homebrew kit, and Jason didn't wait long to use it. On New Year's Day, he brewed his very first batch: a pale ale in the old school West Coast style.

When it was ready, he poured a glass, then another, and felt that familiar warmth start to settle in. He was catching a buzz off a beer he had made with his own two hands. It was a small, almost funny moment, but something about it clicked. For the first time in a long time, he had found something that felt like his.

He kept brewing. Batch after batch, he learned what worked and what didn't. By the tenth, the hobby had become a calling. Jason decided he was going to become a commercial brewer.

Wanting it and doing it turned out to be two very different things. The brewing world is tight-knit, and Jason struggled to get his foot in the door. Along the way, one brewer gave him a piece of advice he held onto: if you have a true passion for it, the rest will carry itself.

So he kept knocking, and eventually a door opened at Brew Rebellion.

It was there that a single beer changed the course of his career. Jason tasted a cherry gose that stopped him in his tracks. It was balanced, bright, and unlike anything he had tried. He became fascinated with it and needed to know who was behind it. The answer was Don Miller, head brewer at Euryale Brewing Company, just across the way.

The very next morning, Jason walked over and introduced himself.

Don was an intellectual brewer, the kind who thought deeply about every ingredient and every step. Standing in his brewhouse, Jason felt something he had been searching for since that first pale ale. This was what it was supposed to feel like. He spent time learning under Don, soaking up everything he could, and those lessons became the foundation of the brewer he would become.

Before long, word reached Jason about an opportunity up the mountain in Lake Arrowhead. He went to meet the owners, Travis and Megan, and they showed him the space. It was an empty warehouse. No tanks, no taps, no bar. Just four walls and a vision.

Jason knew it would take time to get the place ready, but he could see what it might become. He signed on as the founding brewmaster of Lake Arrowhead Brewing and got to work turning an empty room into a brewery.

Then, the very week they launched, COVID hit.

Doors that had just opened were suddenly forced shut. For a brand new brewery, it could have been the end before it ever began. Instead, the team pivoted almost overnight and moved their sales online. The response was immediate. The beer sold out quickly, again and again.

Every one of those beers was Jason's design. Hearing strangers rave about recipes he had dreamed up gave him a kind of happiness he had never found in any office. It was proof that the leap had been worth it.

After Lake Arrowhead, Jason knew it was time to build something of his own. And no matter where he looked, his mind kept drifting north, to Paradise.

He had family there, and he and his wife had fallen in love with the Northern California way of life. The slower pace, the tall pines, the sense of community. But what stayed with him most was a memory from after the Camp Fire. He remembers standing in a parking lot lined with trailers, doing what he could to support his family and the people of Paradise as they tried to rebuild everything they had lost.

That image never left him. He didn't just want to open a brewery. He wanted to be part of bringing Paradise back.

As plans came together, someone gave Jason advice that pushed him further than he expected: go bigger than you originally planned. Around the same time, the old Secret Trail brewery in Chico became available.

It didn't click right away. Jason visited once, then again. It was on the third visit that he finally saw it. This was where his brewery would live.

He went in clear eyed about what lay ahead. Building a brewery from the ground up means being absolutely obsessed with it. It means pushing through the doubts that are guaranteed to show up. And it means putting your head down every single day and doing the work that turns a dream into something real.

That obsession became Paradise Brew Werks.

From the start, Jason built it around rotation, keeping new beers constantly moving through the taps so there was always something fresh to try. The community noticed. At Chico Brewfest, compliments poured in from every direction, and Jason described his booth the only way that felt right. It was buzzing.

Jason's dream led him to Chico, but his heart has never left Paradise. Giving back isn't a side project for the brewery. It is woven into what Paradise Brew Werks is. They donate cans, support the town with proceeds, and showcase local art through an art center display that gives Paradise artists a place to be seen.

Jason sees the brewery as a bridge. Every pint poured in Chico helps move dollars from a healthy community into one that is still rebuilding. To him, it isn't charity. It is two communities working side by side for the good of Paradise.

And Jason is far from finished. His next vision is to open a taproom in Paradise itself, giving the brewery a true home in the town that inspired it all.

It is a long way from a kid watching Slash on MTV, or a financial advisor staring into a mirror at 40. But every step brought him here. It all started with a homebrew kit and a pale ale on New Year's Day.

A small idea. For Jason, Paradise is the big picture.