How craft beer newbies Mountain Culture won the GABS Hottest 100 with Status Quo Pale Ale

The GABS Hottest 100 has become one of the top craft beer accolades in the country — here’s how Mountain Culture won it on the first attempt.

Nearly a week later and brewer DJ McCready still can’t quite believe that he won the prestigious top spot on the GABS Hottest 100 – on his very first attempt.

The American-born founder of Mountain Culture Beer Co, based in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, came in at No. 1 in last Saturday’s countdown of the nation’s best craft beers with his Status Quo Pale Ale, ahead of Balter Brewing’s Balter XPA, and last year’s champion, BentSpoke Brewing Co’s Crankshaft IPA, in third.

“I still haven’t been able to put my finger on it yet,” McCready says.

“I’m expecting it to be like, ‘Hey, it turns out that you were in a coma but we have woken you up now and, surprise, you came in at No. 40’.

“It’s truly unreal. The only other days of my life that I can describe that were similar emotional roller-coasters was probably when I got married or maybe when my daughter was born.

“It was a crazy amount of ups and downs and doubt and joy and being overwhelmed by it all.”

All the more remarkable for McCready, who founded the company in 2017 with wife Harriet, was just how swift the rise to the top was and how a relatively small brewery beat much bigger players.

They did so by making quality beer and mobilising the passionate fans who have visited the Katoomba brew pub and developed a taste for ordering their beers online during the pandemic.

The Mountain Culture crew, with DJ McCready in the centre in blue, celebrating the Status Quo Pale Ale win in the GABS Hottest 100.

Mountain Culture Beer Co’s Be Kind Rewind NEIPA landed at No. 36 in the poll and the Cult IPA was No. 15.

Such has been the demand for their beers that McCready says the company is growing at 400 per cent year-on-year and is in the middle of its third major expansion. When the business began as a brew pub, it had the capacity to produce 60,000 litres a day. When the new brewery site is fully fitted out, McCready says, it will be able to brew that much beer every day.

McCready, who has been a professional brewer first in the US and then for award-winning Sydney outfit Modus Operandi since he was 23, says he was particularly pleased by the award because it is voted by “the people that are actually drinking the beer”.

“It means so much to me,” he says. “I think there’s a real trap as a brewer to get into your head about what you like personally and then sometimes you don’t know if that’s necessarily where other people’s tastes are.

“It’s incredibly gratifying for me and the team to know that we’ve come up with this recipe that is to our taste. And then there’s the fact that this large group of people also got behind it and took the time to vote for it is the best feeling of support that I’ve ever felt.”

As for the winning beer, McCready says that the Status Quo Pale Ale represents everything the company is about.

GABS Hottest 100 2022 podium – Mountain Culture Status Quo Pale Ale in first, Balter XPA second, BrentSpoke's Crankshaft IPA third.

“I was always looking for something that could encapsulate all of the different brewing techniques and different hops that we were selecting, and the skill that we’ve picked up as a brewery, and put it into a format that is still approachable and that you can have a few of and still enjoy.

“We wanted something that when people came into our pub, they could experience these really big flavours but still enjoy several while they’re hanging out with a friend – that’s Status Quo, for us.”

Conventional wisdom has it that Australia is about a decade behind McCready’s native US in all things craft beer, but the enthusiastic expat says that the gap is closing fast, thanks to his adopted country’s broadening tastes and the explosion of independent breweries.

“I was just over in the States about three weeks ago. When I first moved over here, you could taste a real difference in quality between the Aussie craft beer and the American craft beer,” he says.

“But going back to the States this last time, I think that we’re starting to beat them. I think the gap is closing and maybe they will need to start catching up eventually.”

As for where local craft beer trends are heading in 2023, McCready says he expects the Australian love affair with hoppy brews to continue but is also delighted to see the renaissance of an often-dismissed, but widely-drunk style.

“There’s definitely a big push towards lagers coming back, I’m very happy to say,” he says.

“Those styles have been around for so long. I spent a bit of time in Bavaria at the end of last year and that style really exists for a reason and it’s such an amazing style of beer.

“But it’s hard to get away from hoppy beer. There’s so much work that’s been put into the hop-farming industry and so many incredible flavours that are coming out of hops these days that I think that’s going to stay strong for a long time.”

Mountain Culture Status Quo Pale Ale, winner of the 2022 GABS Hottest 100.

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Originally published as How craft beer newbies Mountain Culture won the GABS Hottest 100 with Status Quo Pale Ale