Altered Cultures

We all love Christmas and the pressies that come with it. As Australians, we spend around $11 billion dollars on gifts during the holiday season. In fact, we use more than 150,000km of wrapping paper - enough to wrap around the entire world 4 times! However, with so many gifts being exchanged, it is inevitable that we will see an increase in waste being produced. During the Christmas season, waste production increases by a whopping 30%. The main contributors to this are packaging materials, wrapping paper and food waste.

So, how can we improve this statistic and do our bit for the Aussie environment? Well, here are some tips:

- Send your friends and family emails and e-gift cards instead of physical cards
- Reuse wrapping paper (we know it is fun to tear apart your presents, but if you carefully remove its wrapping, you can save waste and money!)
- Save your leftovers: cured meats like ham can last over a week in the fridge if kept cold
- Reuse used jars and bottles (or alternatively drop them off at a bottle collection depot)
- Turn your vegetable waste into compost (this will keep your garden happy and healthy!)

(Source: National Storage 2018)

When asked about the difficulties experienced in developing Altered Cultures and how they were overcome, here's what Mason Bagios, one of our founders and CEO had to say:

"Developing Altered Cultures required the letting go of traditional brewing approaches and breaking the rules most brewers try to stick to with single-yeast fermentation. You in see in most alcoholic products, brewers are introducing just one yeast, with a very specific purpose and making for a very clear expectation behind the behaviour of that yeast.

We threw that simplicity out of the window and strived to make something unpredictable, delectable.

This required a massive effort of co-fermenting different variations of yeast and bacteria.
Luckily our team were up to the challenge, even excited about breaking conventions.
We sampled brews using champagne yeast mixed with kombucha. Ale yeast mixed with Cider and every combination that the 12-month research window allowed. Most of what we do at a complex brewery like ours is iteration. It's not about getting it right the first time, it's about trying something 20 different ways, and then re-inventing the way as we learn more.

In the end, we managed to create a co-ferment that gets along really well together (when brewing) and creates all of the flavour attributions we were seeking. Fruitiness, Dryness, A bouquet and some body and dastardly moorish. But still a light - doing all of this and achieving a light-ABV product is extremely difficult, and not for those seeking a quick win.

That is the spirit in the team as well. We aren't about short-term wins but the learning process it takes, the tenacity of experimentation and the comfort with failure, makes our success all the more refreshing."