{"id":28509,"date":"2025-12-11T08:21:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T19:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=28509"},"modified":"2025-12-11T08:21:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T19:21:23","slug":"hottest-100-status-quo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2025\/12\/11\/hottest-100-status-quo\/","title":{"rendered":"Upending the you-know-what: the Hottest 100 and Mountain Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
It’s a race to the top by way of a race to the bottom<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Voting is now open for the 18th GABS Hottest 100<\/a>,<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and Mountain Culture \u2014 having placed #1 for the past three years running \u2014 recently launched their latest campaign, this time with a Ted Lasso<\/em> theme. With the tactics and intensity that secured their blockbuster win in the 2022 competition<\/a>, they’ve helped cement a “new normal” for the poll, one of relentless targeted promotion from a few loud voices. It undermines the countdown’s value and appeal \u2014 and, frankly, doesn’t reflect well on them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Mountain<\/a>
2025: The cosplay, at least, is genuinely excellent<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

First airing in late 2020, Ted Lasso<\/em><\/a> would’ve made an excellent reference point for Mountain Culture’s original<\/em> Hottest 100 push. A fish-out-of-water story of an American<\/a> leading an underdog team from obscurity to the big leagues? Perfect.<\/p>\n

But it’s pretty much impossible to overstate the difference between the company then and now. They had a freshly-upgraded production brewery and second taproom<\/a> when they kicked off that first campaign; it was soon expanded again, multiplying their capacity several times over. While going for their second Hottest 100 win, they appointed a Chief Marketing Officer who was previously “global brand strategy and creative director” at Nike<\/a>. Then in late 2024, they took on an undisclosed amount of investment from Pat Cummins<\/a>, captain of the Australian men’s national cricket team, one of the highest-profile people in the country and reportedly the best-paid player in the world<\/a>. He’s\u00a0also<\/em> a pitchman for Liquorland, one of the two huge alcohol retailers, and can be seen with a can of Status Quo very-conspicuously in hand in one of their recent ads<\/a>.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

And from those two original venues, their footprint has since grown to six<\/em> across three states. In mid-2024 they spread from the far West into Sydney’s inner suburbs, opening ‘Village’ in Marrickville with Wildflower<\/a> and taking over Atomic’s Redfern site<\/a> when it was closed by its parent company. Then, in May this year, they bought the ruins of Fox Friday from its administrators<\/a> and \u2014 after quickly flipping two of its component parts \u2014 rebranded both the Hobart taproom and Melbourne brewpub<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
2024: Get your hand off it, Darryl<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whatever Mountain Culture are now, “underdog” ain’t it. They have earned their successes and I’m still a big fan of a lot of what they do,<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> but\u00a0this<\/em> side of them \u2014 continuing to downplay how they’ve changed and claiming the mantle of the brave battler to rally support in a survey of beer drinkers \u2014 is getting ridiculous. Dressing DJ up as Darryl Kerrigan and riffing on\u00a0The Castle<\/em><\/a> last year was already a stretch; pretending they have anything in common with AFC Richmond by putting him in a Ted Lasso costume in 2025 is either worryingly un-self-aware or shockingly cynical \u2014 no one wants to watch an inspirational comedy-drama about a well-heeled club gunning for its fourth consecutive Premiership.<\/p>\n

But this kind of campain\u00a0is<\/em> the “new normal” for the Hottest 100: make a pitch about the general worthiness of your “team” and direct sympathetic voters towards a specific<\/em> one of your beers, to maximise its chances; asking some flagship beer to stand in for your support of its brewery, essentially. To be clear, Mountain Culture didn’t start<\/em> this \u2014 and previous back-to-back winners Bentspoke made the same play, to an extent, to get their Crankshaft IPA to the top spot.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The combination of Status Quo’s upstart win (debuting at #1) and rapid expansion, however, seems to have inspired most of the industry to follow their lead, keen for a similar trajectory in their fortunes and assuming (rightly or wrongly) that a correlation is a cause.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
2023: Identifying with the bad guys.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So this is now the dominant form of communication around the Hottest 100: “Vote for this beer because we’re the longest-surviving indie in the running” or “because no local brewery has made the podium before” or “to put this small town on the map (while we awkardly riff on what its name sounds like in English)” or just plainly “because it’s tough being a small brewery and we could use the boost.”<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> We’re certainly a long, long<\/em> way removed from “tell us your five favourites and we’ll count ’em all up.”<\/p>\n

I know, I know. It’s just a bit of fun<\/em>. But it’s also clearly perceived as commercially important by the breweries and it felt<\/em> like something worth watching to get a sense of the zeitgeist, a way of tracking trends in the industry and the subculture.<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Maybe it was always<\/em> too distorted to be meaningful \u2014 thanks to uneven promotion and the vagaries of the voting system \u2014 but whatever “use” it did have has been diluted (further) in this new era.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem is that the organisers are secretive about the actual numbers<\/em>. This isn’t like a real election where you can see if an incumbent opponent squeaked to victory and is therefore vulnerable \u2014 or if they’re so far in the clear your efforts are better redirected elsewhere. They’ll happily boast that fifty-five thousand people voted<\/a><\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2014 but when I asked whether they’d comment on just the relative<\/em> gap between first and second (or first and tenth, even), I got no reply. A lot of breweries might be wasting their time and resources, making a bunch of noise with little effect; for the people running the poll, it’s all just more eyeballs and emails, so they won’t mind.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
2022: Big pun good, little pun better<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mountain Culture’s first campaign was premised around the fact that it was boring seeing the same names at the top year after year. The slogan “A Vote For Status Quo Is A Vote For Change” has gone from truly brilliant to bitterly ironic. The dignified thing for them to do was to ‘retire’ last year. Three-in-a-row is universally recognised as a special achievement: a hat-trick, a trifecta, a three-peat. Four is… another one. From a brewery with a Chief Marketing Officer who touts their “creativity and innovation” and “disruptive spirit”<\/a> we get more of the same: a poorly-fitting pop-culture pastiche that doesn’t match the reality of who they are now, and which worsens the problems they themselves identified years ago.<\/p>\n

Now, the endgame options are: they get beaten by someone spending piles of money and pushing even harder<\/em> \u2014 although good luck to anyone going up against Pat Cummins’ three million social media followers<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2014 or they keep winning, everyone gives up, and the entire competition atrophies into irrelevance. Neither seems great.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Voting is now open for the 18th GABS Hottest 100, and Mountain Culture \u2014 having placed #1 for the past three years running \u2014 recently launched their latest campaign, this time with a Ted Lasso theme. With the tactics and intensity that secured their blockbuster win in the 2022 competition, they’ve helped cement a “new … Continue reading Upending the you-know-what: the Hottest 100 and Mountain Culture<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-finds","category-reports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1489,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/01\/26\/little-creatures-pale-ale-on-australia-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":28509,"position":0},"title":"Little Creatures Pale Ale on Australia Day","author":"Phil","date":"January 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Ordinarily, I have a fairly 'involved' Australia Day. 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