DJ McCready has always had a passion for brewing, and has worked in beer production most of his professional career.
He grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains region of North Carolina, in the US, and worked as production manager of a large brewery, while his wife, Harriet, worked in the media for women's magazines.
The pair moved to Australia in 2014 to be part of a start-up brewery in Sydney, but before long they decided it was time to "have a crack" at their own business.
That was the beginning of Mountain Culture Beer Co - a name that encapsulated their location and lifestyle.
"We set out on our own, but basically wanted to just stay really true to what we wanted to do," DJ says.
"We started out fairly small given that was really all we could afford to start up with, off the back of our savings and borrowing from basically anybody who would lend us $5 at the time.
"We picked an area that we really loved, but also had a great local scene, and we opened up a venue/brewery."
The pair found an idyllic location in the old building of The Blue Mountain Echo, Katoomba's local paper which began production in 1909.
"The funds we had to invest in manufacturing equipment were pretty limited, so we thought the only way we're going to survive is selling beer to people over our own bar," DJ says.
"It also gave us the chance to really hear feedback directly from the customers and change what we're doing really quickly if we needed to. This helped us create a product people were really interested in."
However, the Mountain Culture bubble almost burst before it had barely been floated.
The brewpub opened in late 2019, the same year catastrophic bushfires ripped through the Blue Mountains, bringing tourism - and brewery door sales - to a standstill.
The situation became about survival. They had to rapidly change their business model.
DJ says during the fires there were signs telling tourists not to come to the mountains "and nobody was, because there was definitely a really big fire risk.
"Even if there wasn't an immediate fire risk, the smoke was so bad you couldn't see 10 metres in front of you.
"So at that point, we really had to pivot what our idea was for the business because we just needed to survive.
"So we started taking our brewpub mentality of creating new beers all the time and we just started canning it."
It didn't seem like much luck was going their way, the timing of those fires and then the ensuing COVID pandemic.
"Luckily we adjusted early on, because the bushfires were put out at the end of January 2020 and then we had COVID lockdown in March 2020," DJ says.
"Fortunately we had already shifted our business, so when the lockdown came through, the only way we could survive was by opening an e-commerce site and sending our beer through the mail, which was incredible.
"We got out there the first week, had all of the beer influencers order it, review it, and they loved the product.
"Everybody started talking about this new brewery that had opened up in the Blue Mountains. So we went from being a regional destination kind of brand, to all of a sudden sending our beer all across the country."
The increased demand came as a shock for DJ, the uptick triggering the need for rapid scaling to keep pace with demand.
"It was a crazy time from pivoting to thinking we're probably going out of business to expanding like crazy and opening up our second factory," he says.
"We went from about four employees to about 70 employees in a pretty short period of time. It was a pretty wild ride."
They created a team who were adaptable to their job descriptions changing every six weeks or so, because of the pace of change.
"I think one year we had 400 per cent growth from the previous year and we were still continuing to grow at such a fast rate," DJ says.
In early 2021, they opened a 3000-square metre factory in Emu Plains, while retaining the small brewery at Katoomba for the development of new beers.
"We've grown to be able to produce about 14 million litres of beer per year," DJ says. "When we first opened up our brewery, we were able to produce 60,000 litres in a year. Emu Plains can now produce 60,000L in a day."
The formula has worked, and at this year's Sydney Royal Show Mountain Culture Beer Co was also a finalist in the RAS President's Medal as part of the fine food awards with its New England India pale ale, called Hill People - only the third beer to be a finalist in the duration of the competition.
Mountain Culture's flagship Status Quo Pale Ale has also been voted the winner of the past two GABS Hottest 100 to be Australia's favourite craft beer.
"It was amazing to be a finalist," DJ says. "We feel really tied to agriculture and what's being supplied to us.
"Our beer is basically a by-product of what's being grown here in Australia."
