Historically, rum is by far the most geographically diverse of the brown spirits. Anywhere that has been able to grow sugar cane, or access its products from nearby, probably has a history of rum making. As a result, many different styles and approaches have been developed, generally independent of one another, though some cultural exchanges have taken place to help mold the category as we know it today.
In Australia, it has long been tradition to make rum in a fairly straightforward manner. Usually molasses is the dominant source of fermentable sugars, fermentations are geared toward attenuation efficiency over congener production (i.e. flavour) and column stills are generally employed for at least a fraction of the distillation; again, efficiency over flavour. There is nothing wrong with this, and Australian producers have historically made some fine rum using these processes.
At Night Works Distillery, rum has always held a different appeal and potential – fermentation. Whether it be the semi-spontaneous inoculations synonymous with rhum agricole, the use of dunder and muck pits from Jamaica, or any number of other processes to diverse fermentative microflora, there are few drinks in the world which utilise as much active flavour production from fermentation as rum. One could argue that mixed culture beers are also contenders, and so it should be of little surprise that cross-pollination of rum and beer fermentation techniques have already been a point of interest under the Lone Gum umbrella. Likewise, our distillation practices are guided by a desire to retain as much of the positive flavour generated from these fascinating fermentations.