Paweł Lewandowski, head brewer at Mount Brewing, isn’t supposed to be here. He was travelling around the world with a plan to spend a little bit of time brewing in New Zealand and Australia before heading home to Poland to start his own brewery.
Eight years later he is still in New Zealand having helped build a solid team that has seen Mount Brewing flourish.
In the office, awards are scattered around: Australian Beer Awards, the Golden Gumboot from the 2023 Malthouse West Coast IPA Challenge. All their NZ Brewers Guild medals hang on a post in the corner.
“We are very humble so we are keeping them away from the public eye,” say Paweł.
They have focused a lot on making the best beer they can and the awards just help them know they are making the right improvements. Beer volume is rising too, a combination of a great sales team and the growing regard the beers are held in.
“So Scottie is our sales executive, the guy who is whipping us. That’s why I’m wearing the long sleeves, to cover the red marks.”
Scottie Featherston says, “It’s f****n’ tough out there but we’re growing slowly. We’re not going to do a hundred new beers this year.”
“Just 80,” jokes Paweł.
“Maybe 18,” Scottie replies. They count up last year’s beers: 18. There were 22 new ones in the schedule for the year ahead.
There are three other brewers on the brew team that work with Paweł.
Leonie, from Germany, Trevor, from Canada, and Tom, from England. They all share jobs around the brewery and take turns brewing and developing recipes for the seasonal beers.
Leonie is brewing Golden Hour Hazy today. Trevor brewed two batches of Golden Hour in the days before (they have big fermenters that take multiple batches to fill). The team work closely together. “That’s our concept, we share, always be kind and stuff like that,” say Paweł. “This is our paradise.”
Sharing flows through to the can labels too. The label lists all of the hops, malts, and other ingredients (“no secrets”), and the brewer’s name is featured too. Paweł hopes that over time people will start connecting the brewers with the beers they like and think like, ‘oh, it’s one of Leonie’s beers. I like what she does with botanicals and fruit’.
Tomorrow Leonie is filtering her next seasonal, Flora Incognita, a hibiscus and spearmint sour. She is excited. It is tasting great and will be a perfectly refreshing beer for the summer.
Paweł rolls up his sleeves later. He has a tattoo of hops on his forearm.
“My first one, but not my last!”
He spent a long time deciding on the artist and design.
“This arm I want to have like dedicated for beer, and this one for travelling, two of the worlds I love. But finding the second artist after it took like eight years to trust the first one…” he laughs.
We talk about The Beer Project and he ask me why I focus on the brewers.
“It’s the people that interest me,” I reply.
He agrees. “Craft beer is the people.”
The crew at Mount Brewing are definitely craft beer people, full of heart and passion.
