BrewDog’s spirits arm, LoneWolf, plans to expand into rum.
The distillery - which The Grocer revealed earlier this month is also preparing to launch a core range of single malt whiskies - has developed a white rum and a clear spiced rum.
“We have just processed 20 tonnes of molasses on site and the white rum is tasting really great,” said LoneWolf head distiller Steven Kersley. “We are currently working out how best to package that up.”
A spiced rum, meanwhile, would draw inspiration from gin distillation, he added, by “taking rum as our base and then distilling our botanicals as you would with a gin, but the botanicals are spice-led rather than juniper-forward”.
LoneWolf has also laid rum stocks down into French wine, ex-bourbon and Pedro Ximenez sherry barrels. Kersley said LoneWolf aspired to match BrewDog’s growing beer market share in spirits.
“We’re going after that ferociously at the moment. We’ll hopefully grow consistently year on year and make the same level of impact.”
Although, he stressed: “We’re aware that with some categories such as rum and whisky it can’t be instantaneous because of stock. So we’re focusing on laying down a lot of good quality spirit into awesome barrels to build up that reserve.”
The news comes as LoneWolf has this week rebranded its gin, vodka and canned premix portfolio, introducing a new colour scheme across the bottles and cans.
“We were getting feedback from the on-trade that differentiation on the bar was becoming quite difficult,” said Kersley.
However, it was unlikely BrewDog’s coming whisky releases would be packaged according to the new format.
“The whisky will probably get its own identity,” he said. “Within that range there’s so much we can do - single malt, grain whiskies, rye-style whiskies - to have that colour differentiation as the main point of difference could get very confusing.”
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