Sugarcane is one of those miracle crops that can lay claim to having changed the course of human history. It’s a history that has already filled many books.
For us, the most important thing is that sugarcane is what makes rum. The fermentation of the sugarcane and distillation of that alcoholic beverage is what makes the drink we know and love.
It can be wildly more complicated than that, if you want it to be, but mostly, for rum distillers, it’s about finding the most appropriate source and type of sugarcane product to make the drink you’re imagining.
There’s a bit of serendipity here, too. One of the byproducts of sugar refining is the sweet syrup known as molasses. Without many uses for this dark, fragrant liquid, it has been the primary source of rum “substrate” for many hundreds of years. Many of the most famous and long-established rum producers make rum by fermenting a mixture of molasses, water and yeast.
There are other ways to go about it, though. You can use freshly pressed sugarcane juice, other refinery syrups, like golden syrup, refined sugar itself, clarified juice and others.
We’ve used almost all of these at some point in our journey. The vision is always the same: how do we create a fermentation that delivers an elegant, refined, smooth base spirit?
Today, we mainly use a Premium+ version of molasses and a rare clarified sugar juice, which is essentially the freshly pressed sugarcane that is clarified and stabilised.
For Red Mill, we work closely with the Harwood Mill on the Clarence River in northern NSW. The reasons are both historic and geographic. The Harwood Mill was originally built by C.S.R., just like the original distillery in Pyrmont. Also, it’s the closest source of sugarcane to us in NSW, making it as close to a neighbour as we can get.
Paul at Harwood Mill leads the production of all the mill’s products, including those that Red Mill uses in White Bay.
The milling process begins with the receival of freshly cut cane, (this happens between early spring to around Christmas). It is then milled, clarified, evaporated, crystallised and made available as the product we know as sugar.
