Day 67 - Softdrinks and rum

Date: 
Monday, August 26, 2024

As we were planning on an afternoon of drinking at the Bundy Rum Distillery,  we caught an Uber into town, to the Bundaberg Brewed softdrink factory.

We arrived a bit early, so we were moved up to the 930am tasting, where we got to try 13 different flavours of softdrink. The lady explained how they were all made and some of the ingredients used. The drinks are all brewed for different lengths of time, which is shown on the bottle label. W3 wandered through the museum and then each got to select a 6 pack of softdrinks to take home, whatever flavors we wanted.

We had quite a bit of time until the Rum Distillery tour, so we grabbed a bite to eat, then decided to walk the 1.7km down to the distillery, instead of catching public transport. We took our time as the temperature was nearly 30 degrees.

Once we arrived, we sat down for a while to cool back down. Leanne checked out the offerings in the Bundy store.

I joined the 1pm tour, which was part of my Blend Your Own Rum experience. We had a group of 30 people and were shown around the factory floor and one of the molasses holding tanks. It's capacity is 5 million liters of molasses,  and when we saw it, it was only half full.

Once the tour was finished, 7 of us started our Blend Your Own Rum experience. We were taken into the barrel house, where everything was laid out for us. We had 5 small glasses of Rum which we would be using for our blends. There was rum from a sherry barrel, port barrel, bourbon barrel, scotch barrel and a heavy charred American oak barrel. We tasted them alltoworkoutwhichones we wanted to use in our blends, then given 15 minutes to blend away. Once we worked out what we wanted, we then filled our bottles from the big oak barrels at the back of the room, then capped and sealed 2 bottles of our blend to take home.

After the tour, we tasted a few of the rums from the shop and worked out what we wanted to buy. As we had no room in the car, we had our order shipped home. Hopefully Tim won't sample any until we get home.

We caught an Uber back to the caravan park, and had an early fivsies dinner.