How our rumis made

Cane, cut in season

Grown on volcanic soil at around 700 metres, crushed to syrup the same week.

The Tablelands sit high and cool for the tropics. Cane grown here takes longer to ripen than coastal cane, and the soil is old volcanic country, free-draining, mineral, and the reason the region grows what it grows.

Cut cane starts degrading within hours, so the window is short. Ours is pressed and reduced to syrup within the week, and the syrup is the only sugar that ever enters the process. There is no molasses, no refined sugar and no dextrose in our wash.

Cane syrup vs molasses →

Fermentation in the tropics

Syrup, water and yeast. The heat does half the work.

Fermentation is where rum gets its fruit. Warm ferments push ester formation, the pineapple, banana and stone-fruit notes that survive distillation and end up in the glass, and Far North Queensland does not need a heater.

We ferment on syrup rather than molasses, which means a cleaner, greener wash with less sulphur to strip out later. That is what allows us to distil at a lower strength and keep more of the raw material in the spirit, instead of distilling high to clean it up.

Everything comes off Helga

A 1500-litre Arnold Holstein copper pot still, and the only one we have ever used.

Helga is the only still we have ever used. Every drop of FNQ rum, from the first fill in 2016 to the release on the shelf today, has come off her.

Copper is not decorative. It reacts with sulphur compounds during the run and softens the spirit without stripping it, which is why a pot still and a syrup base belong together: both decisions are about keeping flavour rather than removing it. A continuous column still would make a cleaner spirit and a quieter rum.

Helga is a pot with a plated column above her, which is how Arnold Holstein builds them, and the sight glasses are visible in the photograph. The rum is pot distilled. How the plates are set for a given run, and how many passes each expression takes, are production settings we have not published, because the fill sheets have not been read against them.

Still

Arnold Holstein copper pot

Capacity

1500 litres

Configuration

Copper pot, plated column above

Distillation

Pot distilled

Passes · plate setting

Not published

Head Distiller

Mark Watkins

Distiller

Lee Boylan

Cuts called by nose

The spirit run is divided by taste, not by timer.

A pot still does not make one spirit, it makes a sequence. The first vapour off the run carries solvent and acetone. The last carries wet cardboard and oil. The part worth keeping sits between them, and where it starts and stops is decided at the spirit safe, on the day, by nose.

Cutting early gives a cleaner, narrower spirit. Cutting late keeps more of the ferment in the glass, and more of the risk. We cut for the cane, which means living with a heavier spirit than a neutral distillate would allow.

Cut points are not yet published →

Filled at cask strength

Into oak at full strength, with the date and the strength written down.

Nothing is watered before it goes into wood. Spirit goes into the cask at the strength it came off the still, and that strength is recorded against the barrel along with the fill date, the volume and the cask itself. Those four numbers are the start of the barrel record.

Casks are reconditioned rather than new, and the type and origin are published on every release page. A rum’s character is at least as much the barrel’s as the still’s, so hiding the cask hides half the answer.

See the Barrel Register →

Tropical maturation

Filled at cask strength into oak, then left to the climate.

Humidity sits above 70% for most of the year and the barrel room swings with the day. Spirit is pushed into the oak and drawn back out of it twice every twenty-four hours, so extraction and oxidation both run harder here than they would in a cool climate.

That is not a shortcut. Tropical maturation costs volume. Evaporation is significantly higher than in temperate warehouses, so a barrel that sits for ten years has far less left in it. A tropical five can read like a temperate ten, but you pay for it in litres, and we would rather say that than imply age is the whole story.

The decision to release

Four verdicts, and one of them is no.

A barrel is drawn and tasted across its life, not once at the end. Every draw ends in a verdict, and the verdict is written down with the date, the strength at draw and who drew it.

Age on its own does not release a barrel. A ten-year cask that has gone dry and oak-dominant is rejected. A five-year cask that is ready is bottled. Rejections stay in the record rather than being left out of it, which is the only way the record is worth reading.

Bottled, with nothing added

Every barrel drawn, tasted and recorded. Water to strength, and nothing else.

Barrels are sampled across their life, not just at the end. Every draw is nosed, tasted and written down, including the ones that told us to wait, and the ones that told us to stop.

At bottling, nothing goes in but water to bring the spirit to strength. On cask-strength releases, not even that. No sugar, no caramel colour, no glycerol, no boisé, no flavouring. If the colour is dark, it is oak.

See the Barrel Register