THE SECRETS OF BUNDY RUM

The Distillery was born in 1888, when seven Bundaberg locals decided with a stroke of genius to take the by-product from the growing sugar industry and open up a rum distillery.

It was their ingenuity and determination that has gone on to define the character of the Bundaberg Rum Distillery and everyone who works there til this day.

Though not without its trials; multiple fires and floods forced the Distillery to close and rebuild, but with grit and unfailing optimism it came back stronger than ever. Today, Bundaberg continues to make the famous Bundaberg Rum Original the same way they always did.

Molasses is what happens when you process sugar cane into sugar. Thick, sludgy and black, raw molasses is delightful, but probably not something you’d take home to meet your mother. That’s why the team at Bundaberg spruces it up and cleans it real good, a process they call ‘clarification’.

Mollases comes through underground pipes directly from the sugar mill cross the road. After this, the molasses has its passport stamped, leaves the distillery and heads for the fermenting tank.

To make rum you need three things; molasses, water and yeast. The team at Bundaberg cultivate their own yeast, which take about 36 hours for a batch. Once that’s ready it joins the molasses and water for a cruisy two-day stay in our fermentation tanks. This gets it to about 8% alcohol, and then it’s off to be distilled.

Distillation is where most of the science happens in the making of rum. There are two rounds here, the first involving the fermented mixture being pumped into a giant wash column and having a steam room treatment to eliminate by-product. The second is similar, but now it’s in a pot still that looks a bit like a kettle. Only the best portions of the vapours are kept, which are fondly known as the ‘heart cut'. These condense into raw rum.

The raw rum, now at 78% alcohol, is also called ‘Immature Rum’ and we all know that some day it has to grow up. This happens in maturation, where the raw rum is transferred over using steel pipes and kept in our Appalachian Range white oak wooden vats, for a minimum of two years. The flavour and colour comes from the tannins in the timber, which slowly seeps in over time. It’s then blended with pure demineralised water down to its bottling strength.

Bundaberg can pump out 120 bottles per minute on their fancy new bottling line down in Sydney. If it's made it this far, that molasses has finished its transformation into Cane Champagne. After a quick wash, a fill and a shiny new cap, that bottle is off to your local bottle shop.