Husk Distillery has a wonderful green outlook onto both mountains and cane fields, and visiting it is an iconic north coast experience. Husk’s products have also become iconic, such as their famous Ink Gin and increasingly, their innovative style of rum.
Husk’s premium rum release is a completely new stye for Australia, made from their own cane fields, the rum is a classy high-quality and complex rum similar to that made in the Caribbean (think Haiti, or Martinique), where cane juice provides the flavour, rather than the Aussie (think Bundaberg) way, made from molasses with artificial additives.
Husk have just released their first premium 100 per cent juice rum, Husk Signature ACR, which is a beautiful farm-to-bottle cane juice rum made entirely on their Tumbulgum farm, a 40-minute drive from Byron Bay. They say, ‘It’s the start of a new chapter, as with this rum we are also launching the Australian Cultivated Rum (ACR) trademark – a guarantee of quality, integrity and authenticity.’
Given that Husk only initially produced Ink Gin to fill spare time in their long-term rum project, you’d have to say they know what they are about, which is just as well, as juice rum production is a very complex business; the rums available in Australia are commonly made using sweeteners and flavours, whereas the ACR process is much more like distilling a fine whisky.
Husk founder, Paul Messenger, is the first person to attempt this in Australia, working with Head Distiller, Quentin Brival, from cane-growing Martinique. Paul says, ‘There is a lot of complexity in making juice rum. It takes one to two years to grow the crop, and then another two plus years to age the rum, meaning you must plan four plus years in advance. You can only make juice rum from fresh cane, which is a very dynamic base product. As soon as you crush it, the juice starts to ferment with wild yeast. From that moment on, it’s a race against time to pitch the distiller’s chosen yeast and gain control of the fermentation. While this is a very challenging process, the battle between the wild yeast and the distiller’s yeast is where a lot of the flavour is created.’
‘As juice rum is a new style in the Australian rum landscape, we wanted to create a set of defining rules to give consumers confidence and clarity about what exactly they were buying,’ explains Quentin Brival. ‘We’re on an evolving journey, inspired by the approach of the rum producers of my homeland, Martinique, and humble in the knowledge that the
Australian craft rum industry is comparably very young. The ACR mark is a starting point and sets a standard that we at Husk will hold ourselves to.’ Husk’s vision for the ACR mark is to create rums with a true sense of provenance using the natural flavours derived from Australian cane varieties.
The pioneers of Australia’s first farm-to-bottle rum distillery have had to have a gradual release to market with their premium aged juice rum having released only three small batch expressions over the past five years. ‘Given the complexity of making juice rum, we understood that this would be a 20-year journey. We are in year 12 and have marked this year by finally releasing our Signature expression,’ says Paul. ‘Signature is the result of 12 years of development without cutting corners. It will sit alongside our diverse range of exceptional rums and cane spirits and will appeal to those seeking fine sipping spirits.’
Info: huskdistillers.com
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