For our Pilot rum, we wanted to create a rum that was simultaneously clean and easy drinking, but with a nod to the local influence of whisky.

 

The process starts by bringing in molasses sourced from the Caribbean. Initially, it’s incredibly thick and flavourful, but far too concentrated for us to process as-is.

 

The first step is to dilute the molasses down with hot water to a more suitable thickness. At this point, the diluted molasses is chilled down to 28 °C and Kveik yeast is pitched. This Norwegian farmhouse yeast is famed for its fruity, vibrant character.

 

After 7 days of fermentation, this molasses mixture has fermented into a liquid called wash, a kind of rum-beer with an ABV of around 10%.

 

Two subsequent distillations then take place in Sandy Stroma: our fully bespoke, first-of-its-kind, electrically fired, 500L Still. The first of these distillations is the wash distillation, which takes the wash from 10% ABV to around 25% ABV. This is then re-distilled in Sandy Stroma, resulting in a rum spirit at around 75% ABV.

 

Whilst we could proof down, bottle, and sell this rum as-is, as white rum, we instead age this rum in ex-Scotch Whisky casks to create our signature Pilot Rum.  This smooths out the spirit, adding notes of butterscotch, oak, toffee, and caramel to the fruit-forward spirit. Each batch of Pilot is getting progressively older, and this is something we’re excited to watch evolve as time goes on. 

 

Every batch of Pilot Rum is a single cask bottling, meaning the colour and cask influence varies slightly batch-to-batch, creating a one-of-a-kind experience with every batch.