When DJ and Harriet McCready launched Mountain Culture brewery in 2019, they were not planning on catastrophic fires or a global pandemic. And yet three years later, the pair have forged one of the best known craft brew brands, and loyal following in the country.
Image: Food & Drink Business.
This week, Food & Drink Business and PKN Packaging News visited the team at its new Emu Plains brewery and brew pub to record another milestone for the company – being the100th brewery to install a Krones Craftmate C canning line in the world. It is the 8th installation in Australia. To mark the milestone, executives from Krones were on hand to present a plaque to the founders.
While Mountain Culture was the first brewpub in the Blue Mountains, on Sydney’s western fringe, and despite a maelstrom of weather and Covid related disruptions, the brewery fast outgrew its Katoomba site and expanded operations to include the new Emu Plains fitout.
DJ McCready said when Covid lockdowns came into force, the pair pivoted the brewpub into an ecommerce operation.
“It was a gamechanger for us. By selling our canned brews online, we were able to bring the experience of trying a new beer on tap into people’s living rooms during lockdown.
“That put us on a fast track to expansion – we went from our original output of 60,000 litres to half a million litres, all in a matter of a few months,” McCready said.
Ecommerce still accounts for 20 per cent of the business.
With sales growing and its profile rising, Mountain Culture caught the eye of Australia’s largest liquor retailers. Initially Coles Liquor and more recently Endeavour Group.
Servicing two national contracts as well as existing sales channels saw Mountain Culture’s existing set-up quickly hit capacity with its canning line.
McCready was adamant the brewery run its own canning line from the outset to maintain quality control and also flexibility to do micro brews, a key driver for the pair in establishing the brewery.
DJ McCready is an experienced brewer who learned his trade in large breweries in the US. He wanted to take those skills and apply them to craft beers, in a setting where there was more scope to experiment with new beer types and flavour profiles than possible in a large scale brewery.
The pair’s commitment to that vision is unfailing. In 2022 alone, Mountain Culture has produced 111 different beers. The runaway success being its Hurricane of Awesomness – the result of a customer survey on what they would like to see in a beer, which was then turned into a beer.
It became apparent – and a matter of urgency – that the brewery needed to scale in physical footprint and output.
The Emu Plains site is a brewery and brewpub – just like the Katoomba brewpub - with a full brewery and packaging lines and an elevated brewpub with 20 taps that overlooks operations below.
The site takes Mountain Culture’s capacity from its current two million litres to eight million litres a year.
And a core piece of equipment in the production is the canning line. The Krones Craftmate C is a specialist filling line designed for craft brewers, with all the technological capability of a large-scale brewing line.
This volumetric filler is compact in design, with flexibility to fill beer (and carbonated beverages) in different can sizes and shapes. Filling accuracy is high, ensuring no ‘giveaways’, with electropneumatically-controlled filling valves and an inductive flow meter ensuring fill quantity can be determined to the last millilitre.
Pressing-on and pressurisation of the cans is performed via a double-acting cylinder and a differential pressure chamber. The product is fed to the machine via laterally positioned buffer tanks and the valve manifold and control cabinet are right next to the filler. This way, the Craftmate C requires only very little space in the packaging zone.
McCready said they chose the Krones Craftmate C because its technology aligned with the types of beer Mountain Culture was creating, from classic IPA and Pale Ale varieties to lagers right through to European beers such as Pilsner, Schwarzbier, or Märzen.
“I’m a co-founder but I’m also a brewer, so my number one priority has always been the quality of our beers. The Craftmate filler is known for packaging beer with super-low dissolved oxygen pickup, which is extremely handy given the hop-forward styles of beers Mountain Culture has become famous for,” McCready said.
The Krones Craftmate C also meets Moutain Culture’s current capacity demand – 6000 cans per hour – but can expand to runs of 15,000 cans per hour.
Krones head of sales Asia Pacific, Thomas Gerstl, visiting from Germany for the occasion to present the plaque, told DJ and Harriet he was proud to deliver the 100th Craftmate C to Mountain Culture, which he believes will support the company on its pathway of “unbelievable success”.
“Brewers like Mountain Culture are motivating us at Krones to continue with the quality R&D in technology development for craft brewers. I'm proud of this product because it was specifically designed for companies like Mountain Culture – a successful product for taking a successful company further,” Gerstl said.
Krones Pacific managing director Richard Gahagan said, “We’re very proud to be associated with Mountain Culture, especially now on their third birthday. We see it as a strategic partnership, to commence a relationship with a customer who is at the start of growth journey that we will accompany them on, hopefully for many years, is very exciting. This plaque not only marks the 100th Craftmate C installed for Krones, but it is also for us the commencement of a long-standing relationship.”
Alongside the Craftmate C, Mountain Culture has also taken delivery of a Sensicol Linear labeller from Kosme, a Krones division.
Harriet McCready says Mountain Culture is known for its striking, creative, and colourful labels. “We need the flexibility to be able to turnaround a label changeover quickly. We often engage with our customers on new brew creations, and then we create a label to match the innovative new brew – speed to market is essential.”
Both machines, shipped here from Krones Neutrabling in Germany, are in situ awaiting commissioning at Mountain Culture Emu Plains, with the first cans set to roll off the lines some time in November.
