Cricketer Pat Cummins has joined Australia’s fourth largest independent brewery, Mountain Culture Beer Co, as its first investor.
Husband and wife team DJ and Harriet McCready opened the Blue Mountains’ first brew pub in Katoomba in 2019 and Mountain Culture has gone from strength to strength ever since.
The two-time consecutive winner of GABS Hottest 100 has since expanded to include an Emu Plains production brewery and bar and recently purchased the former Atomic Beer building in Redfern.
Mountain Culture had been keen to open a venue in inner Sydney for some time. The new venue is due to open next week and will feature the brewery’s first-ever barrel program, where a variety of exclusive beers will be aged in and blended from barrels, including ex-bourbon and Australian rum.
The partnership with Cummins came about as a result of Mountain Culture’s packaging manager living next door to the Cummins family. He gifted some merchandise to this neighbours and Harriet saidHe really wants to put in the hard work; he wants to get his hands dirty and is really involved in the business, he doesn’t just want to be a pretty face – even though he is one.” “we were stoked when we saw him wearing it”.
“But then we saw him drinking the beer [on his Instagram], which he’d bought of his own volition, and that’s when we thought, ‘Hey, maybe Pat wants to join us on our mission to bring really good beer to Australia’,” she said.
DJ added: “It was really organic, we just saw him drinking our beer on social media, he was actually wearing one of our jumpers, and we thought ‘You know what, screw it, let’s just message him’. We hit him up and he replied saying ‘I’m in India, let’s do beers over Zoom.’”
On LinkedIn Mountain Culture wrote about the partnership: “He bowls bouncers at 145km/h and holds the country’s second most important job, Captain of the Australian Cricket team,” Mountain Culture said. “And now Pat Cummins can also say he’s Mountain Culture’s first investor!
“We’ve been chatting to Pat for a while now and discovered besides the whole fast bowler thing, we’ve got lots in common: He grew up 10 minutes away, his dad worked at the site next to our Emu Plains factory for 30 years and he’s very partial to a Status Quo or two.
“But when it comes to investors, we knew the most important thing was they aligned with Mountain Culture’s values. Pat does. So it was a no brainer that we ask him to join us on our journey to help more Australians discover really good beer.”
Cummins’ will invest both his money and his time in the business.
“He really wants to put in the hard work; he wants to get his hands dirty and is really involved in the business, he doesn’t just want to be a pretty face – even though he is one,” DJ said.