Rum Talk with Hampden Estate transcript

[Music] do [Music] do [Music] all right hello everyone welcome to today's worspo live stream featuring hampton estate which i feel like people have been just waiting to hear from in this series i know everyone's really excited so uh today we have your host matt pietrick who is joined by three special guests from the team at hampton we have kenroy gordon peppy grant and christelle harris i'm going to let matt introduce you to them more formally in just a second uh before we jump in real quick i'm will jingo from zambia.co and just want to point out as always a few different ways that you can interact with each other and with matt and the guests throughout the presentation today so on your right you'll notice a chat box over there i see several of you have already found it so uh feel free to just say hello and let us know where you're joining us from in the world it's always cool to see that i see we already have people from all over czech republic london new york panama florida so that's always super cool to see secondly if you have a question about hampton about any of the content and the presentation today there's a little button at the bottom of the screen that says ask a question so just press that button enter your question in and we'll be keeping an eye out for those and try to save some time at the end for that uh and last but not least feel free to invite your friends to join us there's a little share button at the top that makes it easy to do that uh but with that said uh matt i will turn things over to you thank you will it's a pleasure to be here again i think this is number 14 or 15 in our uh rum talk series uh for those of you who are tuning in uh for the first time um perhaps uh this is a series that we at worst by the west indies roman spirits producers association uh we we came up with when the pandemic started and people weren't able to travel and everybody was going online we thought it was a great opportunity to bring the rum makers to you the primarily the enthusiast public the the rum lovers and over the past um i don't know year and a half or so it seems like we have we have been doing these live streams with with you know the stores and people making the rum trying to get you behind the scenes and and get very technical rather than you know marketing and expression like we want we want people to actually know how the rum was made and so i'm i'm particularly excited for this particular one uh i will tell you that hampton estate was was sort of my introduction to to high ester jamaican rum and and uh the visiting hampton was just like a complete dream when i did it back in 2016 uh and and it was sort of so eye eye opening and i took some of those experiences uh and wrote about them over the years um and we're writing about thunder and muck and clean acid things like that so um i'm incredibly excited and honored to be hosting this the session today so um i'll stop talking now and and turn it over to into uh kenroy pepe and christelle and i've never met kenroy but i've met met pepe and christelle before so uh ken roy and pepe why don't you youtube start out tell us what you do at hampton what's your head first okay i'm kendra gordon good afternoon everyone i'm kendra gordon i'm the quality control officer here at hamden history so i'm basically in charge of all quality aspects from raw materials the process and the final product i am also in charge of blending and aging hellos i am pepe grant and i do a little bit of everything right as long as the sun shines and the rain falls i am in it so i manage the tours um we have a little stud form here that i also manage and and also do other aspects here at the distillery as well wherever it's needed i'm there excellent and i know many of you have met christelle over the years but for those of you who haven't christelle tell us a little bit about you and your connection to hampton you're muted i was muting it there we go now typical hi everybody everybody who knows me know that's not very surprising um hi matt thanks for the intro um hi pepe hi ken roy people often think that because we live in the same place we see each other but i haven't seen either of you in a very long time so nice to see you um i'm christelle harris for those of you who don't know and i am a director of hamden estate my family took over the estate uh 10 plus years ago and we're very proud to be able to have diversified the way that hamden is enjoyed and increase the accessibility of information to do with hamden to rum lovers everywhere thank god that audience is rightfully growing so we're happy to be be on the train at this time kind of as far as i'm concerned leading the train i don't know i might be a little biased but might be a reasonable assumption at the same time um i do not really have very much to do with the day-to-day operations of the distillery at all i'm not there i'm in kingston i do i do participate in the management of a lot of the companies within our group which spans different industries well obviously rum but also retail pharmaceutical um gaming hospitality dry cleaning kind of you name it so and obviously horse racing as well and as and as pepe said he is the um the stud farm manager so that ties in there but i'm not really at the distillery that much i i'm very proud that i i took rum fire on the road so i took hamden's first product since we um took over ownership on the road and i really learned a lot about the the rom community and run production in general from traveling and meeting other and meeting room lovers so it's really kind of come full circle i'm more based at home now because of the pandemic but it's it's really nice that now we're getting the opportunity to use this forum to meet our our fans and our audience again and i'm really happy to be able to include the people that are really behind the juice i've i've created the partnerships and i've you know i've met the people that we work with and i've i think i've created synergies and appreciation internationally and and a face to put to the brand but now i think it is a time for um for the people behind the juice to really get a chance to represent it as well so i'm very happy to be able to do that kind of starting now well thank you christelle and and i will echo your your last point there that's what we're trying to do here with this series we're trying to to give people you know the behind-the-scenes information and meet the run makers meet the people who are doing day-to-day work on it so we're very happy to to have this so with that said uh let's jump into the presentation yes happy i think you're leading off oh or am i i don't know i was smart okay welcome to hamden estate welter rum talk with hamden estates featuring myself to a lesser extent and to a greater extent of pepe grant who is going to take us through a bit of the geography and history of hampden estate uh leading into present day and then we're going to get to really the meat of the matter or should i say the the esterific-ness that's not a word of of the matter with kenroy so if we can start with you pepe you can take it away sure so wrong people hello again from beautiful hampden in trelawney um trilogy is located in the northwest part of jamaica hamduli states hampden estate is boarded really two parishes trelloni and saint james right um we're located in queen of spain valley trilani faces the caribbean sea with fertile plains in the north and cockpit country in the south cockpit country is an unspoiled mountainous area covered in tropical forests and you can skip so since the end of the 19th century jamaica had 148 distilleries today only six remains george mcfarka lawson developed the method of producing the most aromatic roms with high levels of esters hamden has been producing full intense flavorful heavy pot still roms since the mid late 90s late 1700s sorry historically hampden produced on-age roms and shipped in bulk to europe although the business model has diversified this practice is maintained hamden rums currently go up to 1600 esters but we could go further personally i can tell you that i've seen five thousand to seven thousand esters okay and i'll just jump in really quick and mention that that limit is is like you mentioned not at all technical it's actually a jamaican regulation it's been in effect since 1934 the jamaican spirits pool at the time said we're going to top it off at this and and they still enforce that today i i asked and they still unfortunate today right right right so we we do make higher esters but hey uh only ken roy and myself and crystal get to to to marvel at that right one day when you guys come we'll see so to continue the with the history of hamden uh hampden was first surveyed in 1684 by thomas goodard formalized his hampden estate in 1753 and operated as a large sugar plantation on the ownership of sir archibald sterling of scotland sterling built the hampden great house in the ground floor served as the rum storage area the upper level uh the residential structure was added in 1799 today the fire brigade will never allow such a thing as for you to have a rum store and then live on top right that that will never be passed but it is what it is back then by 1767 hamden was producing 122 puncheons which are wooden cats of rum per annum which is equivalent to approximately 60 000 liters um which was exported to england and scotland by 1852 hamden was bought by george mcfarland lawson 1875 23 years later george died his nephew dermot owen kelly lawson inherited hamden and i want you to remember that name dermot owen kelly lawson uh financial difficulties forced the family the current owners back then to sell to scj jamaica limited and by 2003 sugar stayed the sugar stayed closed leaving only the distillery so the distillery was always operational from 1753 until today we've never stopped making rome oh can you go back for a second sure yeah just i just want to point out as well uh that that the dermot owen kelly lawson that that is the bottom most mark picture that's actually his his uh grave site at hampton and and that that i and when i noticed that like my jaw dropped open so and we'll come back to that later so keep going present day 2009 everglades farm limited owned by the hussey family acquires hamden estate hamden's process was well preserved and continues to be maintained hamden continues honoring the relationships with bulk run buyers that the houses inherited continuing in 2009 the houses began barreling rome first time ever in the history of hamden rum went into a barrel to age care um our flagship room rum fire was bottled created waves all over and 20 coming up to 2018 hampden began the partnership with la maison and valere as international distributors same year of 2018 we launched hamden estate aged bulk uh age rom sorry in uk and europe the following year 2019 we launched camden estate aged rum in the us which did quite well i must say and continuing on um we will now get to the five pillars of hamden rum which is spring water hamden spring water solely pot stills wild fermentation tropical aging only sugar-free and natural colors now when you guys get here you'll get to take a walk through that lovely gate and into hamden distillery hamden's water source hamden's water supply is from a spring um and a dam which is 2.5 miles away from the distillery constructed in 1760 the water is piped to the distillery so from the 1700 the water is gravity fed to the distillery and it still is today the waters integral to hamden rum making process um along the line i'll let you know that we we sit on the largest aquifer in the island and beneath us 20 feet if we take our a hole 20 feet here at hamden we're hitting fresh water so that water is part of the cockpit country as well leading from the country hamden rum would not be the same without this water it would be different if we are to use um nwc water which is the regulated water national water commission has chlorine and such in it we do not use that here as a matter of fact we do not have that nowhere in on hamden's estate nowhere in ham than property do we use chlorinated water right okay so we've gone through the history so now let's get into the meat of the matter how harmless is made so we start with our molasses all the molasses is oh sugars to be about 52 fermentable sugars that is so that's the sugar that's going to be converted from sugar into alcohol for our process we do not pasteurize or clarify molasses before using it in the wash mixing we grow our own sugarcane on the estate a cane is milled right here on site and is sent into our aging or cane juice acid tank where it is allowed to ferment water until it becomes acidified and we call that cane acid which is really acetic acid but just from the cane juice this acetic acid is mixed in our washer and we are mixing water as a part of our wash mixer but we'll get to that as we move on okay so just so just to clarify you're not fermenting just a fresh cut cane juice you're making king juice and you're using that to make acid first correct yes yes so we know so we don't ferment cane juice for the sugars right in cane juice yes you're not you're not making rum agriculture no no no no i just want to clarify that okay good sure no problem all right so the so the washer attachment is composed of a few things so as pepe alluded to before it's exclusively damp water that is used here as a part of the wash whereas we have a well onsite the well is used for domestic purposes but for the mixing of the wash we use exclusively damp water molasses under our venus as some people refer to it and cane acid which is the fermented fermented candles that i just spoke about when we combine all these components we call it heavy wash and heavy wash is pumped into our seed of fermenters and this is where primary fermentation takes place so what we're seeing there is the mixing of the wash that's not where the actual fermentation is right then okay so this this picture to the right of your screen now this is we call this the wash mixing cistern this is where all the components are are added and they're mixed yeah they're setting down into the ground down into the ground yes and from here it is pumped into the seat of us okay so dunder we made mention of london or venezuela some people know it but let's just get a bit into what donda is blonder is that liquid which remains in the pots kettle after the distillation run this distillers in some other places call it stillage or winners most jamaican distilleries most other distilleries outside of hamden dispose of their donda at the at the end of each cycle or at the end of each distillation and they dispose of that mostly by spreading it on the cane field because it is a good fertilizer but here at hamden the majority of the daunder that we produce is reused in the wash mixing process the donda after it leaves the the um distillation kettle is stored in wooden but our fermenters again similar to the to the fermented fermentation fermenters and it is reused again in the wash when we are mixing the adding of stilage to wash isn't unique to wrong there are also some bourbon um producers who do this as well and in that case it is called sawmash so these are a few pictures of our fermenting host and you heard me mention the seed of that you can see them on those pictures there so they are small it would be a bit different from what you would be used to at other distilleries where the fermenters are larger but we have a lot of small seed or wooden pots that we put our wash into ferment and how many baths are total go ahead go ahead man i would say how many how many vats do you have going at any one time okay so i'm i'm pretty sure this number will will surprise a lot of people as it is now we have 85 wooden parts 85 wooden butts that's a lot that's a lot yeah yes yeah because i mean part of it is like you have you have such long fermentations you have like you have to keep putting putting into the system so you eat all those yes so because of the length of the fermentation time we need to have a lot of um wiggle room so that we have enough space to store to store the wash as it is mixed so it's kind of on a staggered basis so when we will use the earlier ones that mix and then we keep refilling over time right and back back back to that slide for a bit yes before we want to the previous slide you will you will note it says fermentation here as well there's no added yeast so we will get into it after a bit further down that our fermentation takes longer than you would expect but that is what happens when all our fermentation is well so we add no e so it's all natural fermentation next step all right so hamden fermentation takes about 8 to 15 days in total and this covers primary and secondary fermentation they but the cedar vats are open here so they are not covered so they are all open in our fermenting house we have wooden floors with very tiny walkways matt will be able to tell you because he's been here it's really compact and nice it's just a nice environment to be in while these lives and reproduces in the various rooms in the fermenting holes once alcoholic fermentation is completed which is the first part of the fermentation the dead wash remains in the in the vats for up to another two weeks mock is added at the end of primary fermentation and this introduces bacteria into the system which causes the development of the heavier esters which hamden is known for the mock process helps to develop the esters for the different marks or heavier roams with the higher esters the adding of the mock increases that and it also increases the bouquet of hamburger so i mentioned just now and i'm sure a lot of antennas went up so what exactly is mob mock is an integral part of the wash here at hamden a mock is stored in the muppets which is below ground in the fermentation house so if you can see that picture to the right there is that railed area between the two sets of fermenters that is where or mock it is so the more contains the thick matter deposited from the donda and the fermenter bottoms at the end of each um production year so the fermenter bottoms are cleaned out and then they are stored away for for a period of time in what we call graves and at the end of seven years we read those grades and then re-add it to the market so muck consists to a large extent of dead yeast and therefore it is full of nitrogen mock also has a high bacterial load many bacterial varieties produce different flavor compounds as products of their metabolism among the products of the metabolism are heavier acids now these acids will combine with the alcohol made in fermentation and they combine to form heavier esters now the heavier esters don't necessarily give you the seeds the same sweet aroma that you get from ethel acetate but they they are heavy flavor compounds which gives similar smells to banana or pineapple and this gives the complex bouquet that is characteristics of ham denim thank you and i don't just want to interrupt really quick uh kenroy just just to sort of um reiterate and and you can correct me if i'm wrong but essentially what this is is there is a normal fermentation like you would see at most distilleries that last a week or so and then instead of immediately distilling that you actually leave it then you add the muck in and that muck sort of induces a second bacterial fermentation that creates addition yet more flavor so you could you could you could make rum without muck you could make it with muck but the muk is sort of like when you want to supercharge it you add that towards the end of the fermentation process exactly so at the end of the at the end of the initial fermentation where most listings would distill their their alcohol right have they worked at that point and then leave it for the secondary fermentation to take care of it so is it is the muck in there the entire secondary fermentation or just like a few days at the end a few days at the end before distillation happens okay and i think it's also it's important to note that um there are a few other distilleries that use things like muck but muck is one of those things that's also unique to every distillery that that like you have your natural yeast it's the same with my each distillery's muk is going to be different as well so that's that's how you get these different flavors from different distilleries exactly yeah so obviously the time then would not be comparable to the mock at another distillery correct because of the differences in environment okay cool thank you sure no problem all right so after fermentation the next step is distillation now distillation this is the process where the alcohol that is made during fermentation is driven out of the out of the mixture and it's collected as well so at hamden distillery at hamline state all distillation takes place in double retards copper pot stills each distillation cycle okay so and for pot steel distillation it is batch distillation so it's done in batches start to end then you empty the vessels and start again so each cycle takes about seven hours to complete and that seven hours covers time from which the wash is pumped into the the kettle and the retards are loaded with the below and the hairline so from that point until the end of the cycle it's about seven hours the low and high winds produced and collected during each cycle are used for charging the retards for the next cycle most of the dawn darvin has discharged from the pot at the end of the cycle is collected and reused in washington station the lease left in the retorts at the end of the cycle also we collect we collect those and we use them into the cousins process so we use those leaves and combined with um hydrated lamb to form salts which we will reuse in the cousins process and now the cousins process for those of us who are familiar with rome is a chemical reaction in which we we are able to make supercharged esters now if you notice here we have that we are able to get esters of up to five thousand grams per hundred and eight right so is it is it safe to say that the the core of a cousin process is essentially throwing together a lot of alcohol and a lot of acids all in a very small space and so you just get a supercharged investor production yeah exactly because the alcohol because once the alcohol and the acids are in the same environment yes right and it's and it's actually unlike the esters that are created during fermentation the these these esters are created like during the distillation process correct like it's where everything comes together yeah because the heat acts as a catalyst in this reaction so during the distillation process right yeah there is a paper out there if you look hard enough there's a paper uh that describes the cousin process written by by h.h cousins himself so yes here are something remember if i'm very familiar with that paper yes i'm sure yeah um you will also notice um but in the previous slide a bit please before we move on yeah you'll also notice that we reuse a lot of what is made what what what what would normally be waste from from the process so you see we reuse our donda for the most part and we reuse our leads so our process makes very little waste when compared to most other um processing plants and therefore there's a there's little environmental impact from our distilling next slide okay so we we spoke about the double [ __ ] copper pot stills and here at hamden we have six of these stills so we have one the oldest still which is also the smallest is a john doe and it was installed in 1960 now this still has a capacity of 2 thousand gallons which is about about nine thousand liters so the other five pot stills are five thousand gallon stills there is one vendo which was commissioned in 1994 and there are three four sets one was commissioned in 2010 and the other two which are newest spot stills were commissioned in 2020 and the final 5 000 gallon pot steam is made from a south african company called tnt and this was installed in 2016. yeah it seems like the hussy family has bought a lot of pot still since by the way yes you can notice the difference since they took over in 2010 versus yeah quite a bit so these are just some pictures of the pot stills you can see that the age is showing on the joint door still but it is it is very integral to our process here so it has been around since 1960 and this is the vendor which has been around since 1994. this picture now shows the the original four sides so that was in 2010 and this snow is the tnt this is a picture from when it was being put in you can see the scaffolding and whatever is still there yeah yeah and they they all kind of look very similar they're i think they're all your your intent was to make them as similar as possible to make their problem consistent yes yes so for the untrained eye when you come into our distillery you will you won't really be able to tell the difference between the posters because they're all um set up in this similar way yeah okay so at home then we have eight marks so that start we will start at the lowest so at the lowest mark we have owh which is between 40 and 80 esters and this is a very light rung described as common clean and i just want to jump in really quick and say 40 to 80 esters is still fairly flavorful compared to say like a a uh a cuban rum or or a light column still drum 40 is still quite a bit of esters compared to most other roms yeah but based on our process it's on the very very light end yeah right thickness yeah so it's plenty of flavor in that rum yeah yeah yeah okay so just a step above above ow h is the lfch and that is 85 to 120 studs uh to me to to point to a point of note these two marks were developed since the hosting family takeover take took over hampden if you notice the names so o.w.h is ultram and lfch is lawrence francis close horses so these are our two the two newest marks so for the other marks increasing in ester concentration we have lrok which is 250 to 350 stars then we have hlcf which is 500 to 700 diamond h which is 900 to 1000 hgml which is a thousand to eleven hundred c diamond h which is thirteen hundred to fourteen hundred and the d okay which is fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred now as pepe um alluded to before this is where we and matt also said it this is where we are legally allowed to stop but those of us here at time they know that we make us as far in excess of this but the the the laws of the country only allow us to stop here at 1600 all right so after distillation the next step now is the lab and and and um organoleptic analysis for those of us who can see my background we're currently sitting in the lab so this is one of our two labs this is the analytical lab where organoleptic analysis and gc analysis are done we also have another lab here at hamden which is the wet chemistry lab um this is the more traditional um laboratory where webcam methods are are used to test both raw materials and rom samples at the end of each room now once the rom is produced and once it comes through the lab and the quality team approves the rom it is sent on to the next step which is storage and blending blending is done on-site so blending is all blending is done here and the resultant blend is either sent to bottling shaped as bulk in iso tanks or placed in pork bars for storage in our aging warehouses now most of the rom made here at hamden is shipped involved to our customers in europe bottling is done in a small bottling plant outside here on the tango state it's not a year-round operation as currently we bought less than ten percent of our product and as we bottle implant being constructed so we expect our bottling demand to increase over time now what is this shita's bulk or place of center bottling placed in barrels so the rum is blended into one of the eight marks that we discussed earlier and it is placed in these barrels and sent to our aging warehouse to be stored okay so on this slide you will see a picture of some of our barrels so we here at something use x bourbon bars there are 200 liters for the most part and these are stored in our warehouse so far for hamden rom to be 100 authentic camden estate it must be in jamaica so even when we do sell volcan to europe and they age it there it cannot classify as a hundred percent authentic combination because it has not been aged in general as i mentioned we age our roaming 200 liter ex-bourbon cars but as it is now we have some other cars which we are using as kind of an experimental process to see how finishing in other cars will will help in our age room products we currently have approximately 2 400 cars aging and the forecast for the next few years you will see here are on this line so by the end of 2021 we expect to have about 2 700. and by 2030 we expect to have about 8 000 barrels of aedra typical angel share here at hamden we've noticed is about 67 per hour and due to that um evaporation loss if you would call it that jamaican exercise law requires that every three years roms of stimula age and marker home are um what's the word combined environs to ensure that there's not too much space left in the bags because you know the marrying of the the interaction between the room and and the barrels happens best when there is not too much head space so you need a lot of alcohol to barrel interaction okay so here are a few pictures of our aging warehouse this this is one picture from outside and this this the lower picture is showing us how the how the barrels are stacked so some distilleries will use rocks but here atom then we find that using that storing ballot barrels on pallets is much easier in terms of improvement and relocation over time so the capacity of the current aging warehouse is 5000 barrels so there are plans in place to build additional warehouses so in in summary now let us go over the steps of the process here at tambo so the process starts with wash mixing when the wash is mixed then this wash is sent to the fermenters and allowed to ferment and in the case where we need them to age we allow the wash to age now the wash at the end of the fermentation process is called dead wash so dead wash is distilled and we know using copper pot stills we distill those in batch distillation to produce one at the end of distillation rum undergoes quality and organoleptic analysis then the next step is blending and blending and from blending we either send out as bulk sent to bottling or sent to the engineer office so again at hamden everything is natural no additives so hamden rum is sugar-free natural color no additives hamden's pure single rooms are produced aged and buttered without any additives there is no added sugar no added tannins no added glycerin no added caramel there is nothing artificial and all water is a great room does not need cosmetic improvements so some environmental initiatives we currently have here at hampden so we are in the process of commissioning a micro turbine for clean power generation so we are trying to to get away from the use of fuels which we know burn to give off um harmful guesses for the environment so we are commissioning a micro turbine or clean for a generation or boiler here at the plant has been converted from burning heavy fuel oil and we now use liquefied natural gas as fuel electric cogeneration is also one of our projects so we we are using electrical code generation from renewable fuels we have water conservation initiatives we are in the process of implementing storm water management systems all all our drainage and and funnels then we are in the process of paving those and collecting all of the stormwater here we have mitigated airborne pollutants including the conversion of ebola and we are also in the process of harnessing co2 for reuse so rum fire the beginning of hamden's new era um we were here together and basically the directors the hosie family just basically said you know let's put that juice in a bottle rum fire was first bottled in january 2010 it has become a bartender's must-have and that's all over the world it's available in europe the us and of course jamaica how many esters does it take till you get to rom file for 450 esters um which is the main reason why bartenders love it and i must say not only bartenders myself i'm quite sure you love it as well matt i do i have five bottles here five bottles okay way to go way to go um and yeah it's it's it's this is the photo is showing one of the branded bars that we have on the on the way to hampden estate um it's part of tradition here that you basically brand your location your brand where the rom sells most right so we will be we hopefully i don't know i'll have to talk to crystal and see how how we'll get to brandon a few bars in this in the states in europe you know um yeah oh quick question um i know other people have asked me this and i don't know is is rum fire is it a single mark or is it a blend of different marks no well it it is rum fire would fall into our hlcf mark so it's in that range yes so the romper is about 450 stocks so we definitively blend it as hlcf and then it goes as so it's basically just hlcf mark rub correct okay cool question answered keep going how did the state age on the estate um what we have is a alcohol on the left and we have a 60 alcohol age room on the right two beautiful rums um multi award winning i'm sure you guys who have tasted it i'm sure you guys who have who have tasted it can attest to that all right um do you want to interject there christelle yeah no i just wanted to say um one of the reasons i would say hamdan estate aged on estate um it's not that other aged hamden roams if it's not aged on the estate it's not that it's not happening it's just a matter of what it can be called so when we spoke about when uh kenroy and pepe spoke earlier about in order for it to be authentic hamden es state rome we're really talking about the brand so once uh once hamden is born and distilled in jamaica it's still going to be harmed and wrong but once it leaves the distillery we don't have any control over what happens to it so in order yeah so i'm asking the audience if they understand i can't hear you that that's that was a rhetorical question but uh i just wanted to make that clarification that or make that distinction as to why we say authentic camden and state wrong because really once it leaves we don't have any control over what happens to it so once it's there hamden estate branded bottle um that's our stamp of approval and our stamp of authenticity really and and all the products that's being aged on estate has been earmarked for our personal releases so that's you know going into well it's another step into the right direction for our new era of rome that romfire started can you continue pippy thank you okay bro yeah so um once again two beautiful romes um when it comes on to both the aroma and taste out of this world and it's basically typical in hampden um as crystal mentioned it's a step into our new era of of hamden rums coming from hamden which you guys can always come here and taste firsthand um and um we do have other releases that that's coming up for you guys christelle i'm quite sure first you'll be seeing this that is the first time i'm seeing that okay so thanks for the surprise yes just just bottled two days ago right yeah i know i've been getting quite a few questions from uh rum lovers rom geeks uh my favorite people uh as to when to expect disciplinary edition 2021 and there you have it yes yes and to continue on the distillery editions um we have the 2019 which was the first age rum created here in hampden it's exclusively for hampden estate the demand however for it was so great internationally that we share the allocation with hamden's international distribution partners which is la maison and veler we have an annual limited edition release and as i just showed you the new release and i must tell you guys following in the footsteps of traditional hamden rum you gotta taste it okay so you guys are privileged you're the first to see this right you're one of the privileged ones it's always going to be the first one to [Laughter] can take you tell us a little bit about it like like what the strength or how long or like what what are like our redis label or something we want to know more about that so i think um the first two editions were bottled at 59 uh and can we correct me if i'm wrong i believe that the 2021 was bottled at 55 correct 55 yes that's correct right and if you want to talk about uh what the difference is and i think 2019 is sold out internationally i don't think you can get it anywhere we do have some left in jamaica for our allocation however but you have to come to the tour and visit pepe in order to get it so our tour is in brazilian corridor is practically less than one percent uh covered cases so i i've come to jamaica i'm gonna make you feel all right i'm just kidding so 2019 is sold out worldwide but 2020 is still available can roy help us understand um i think you probably be the best person what the difference is between the 2019 the 2020 and the 20-21 and what is the the common thread okay so so without going into too much detail um 2019 was was the flagship of the the great horse edition right so 2019 was it was a small amount so it was basically a trial run if you want to call it that so in 2020 we can't it's okay so first of all this is a blended product so the barrels were aged in marks as i mentioned before and then after the aging they were blended so it's two different marks that is blended into each of these so one of the major differences between each release is that the the year when the the rom initially went into the barriers is going to be different so the final blend is going to come out at the same age because each year it's increasing in time but the year when the rom went into the bar is different so for the 2021 we have a blend of uh 2011 rom and a 2017 one making this all okay and then do you share any information on ester levels or anything like that okay so as i as i mentioned it's two different blends so the so the result the resultant ester level is going to be about 400. so basically it's a same blend but just a different intake well i'm very generous that you get to taste the 2021 here today on thursday afternoon at not even 3 o'clock but for the rest of us that is why you should visit us at industry i was just about to say people try to swim up something for you matt uh i think you will have to come back i won how has it been five years yes go on well as crystal said you know we're in the resilient corridor so we're not really affected that much at all any at all uh with covid and i must say that here at the distillery for the guys here who are drinking rum we don't have to really worry about it you know overproof stuff hamden rum oh no we always have to be very responsible or you're saying that you bathe in overproof rum is it that's what we do to remain covered free you should try it matt and your audience i know but it has to be harmed and wrong i must say i don't know about anything else yes i'll brush my teeth with it it's actually not a bad idea so you can follow us online if you don't already chances are if you're tuned in here on this uh thursday afternoon chats you probably do follow us online already but we have a pretty nifty website as well that really gives you a nice visual feel of what to expect at hand then and what you know gives you a nice look and feel of what hamden is as well as goes over some of the technical aspects of our production and some of the historical tidbits that we shared with you today and some more so you can uh visit us at hamlinestateroam.com and also follow us on facebook and on instagram at hamdinestaterum and also romfire jamaica um i think matt you probably want to take us into some q a yes we do we have we have we have 20 questions now and i just previewed some of them just are not good ones to ask necessarily um but uh i'm going to go through them in order so are in priority order what people have voted for so if you haven't voted yet on on uploaded questions you know if you want to make sure it gets answered quicker go go go upload it so uh first first question i assume for kenroy what what quality chucks checks are done on the buck pits like how basically like how do you how do you maintain the muck piss how do you keep them healthy and you know making you know with the bacteria that you want okay so um the the bacterial um makeup of the mug with is not really controlled so much by us so if we our process historically has basically been the same so once we don't change anything the bacteria the the bacteria alone should be more or less the same so a part of the the the magic behind him then wrong also is that you don't really control what happens you allow nature to take its course okay so once we keep the process the same and we keep on doing the same thing so we use the same fermenter bottoms at the end of the the rum crop and continue to bury stuff in the grave and replenish them up with the bacterial activity should be the same so we don't want to get too into the process and try to add too much of a human effect to it that we end up changing things yeah don't don't mess with something that works exactly yeah so um i i know i've gotten this question a lot because i i've written about muck um is the distinction like people think mukpith but then they see these outside pictures of like which i believe are muck graves um so there's like the mop pit which is actually in the distillery by the fermentation area that's separate from where you put it out there's stuff put outside in the ground can you tell us a little bit about the difference there okay so so what so what what comes from the graves replenishes the muppets okay so it's basically a circle so at the end of the at the end of the the production year we clean all the deferments as i told you about so the bottoms so whatever mod and and and then yeast and whatever residue is left in the bottom of the fermenters at the end of the year that is cleaned out and that is and that goes to the graves where they are buried for three to five years so they are so they are covered um we keep adding laundry to them to keep to prevent them from drying out over that time okay so they are very old and then when the graves know our rings that is used to replenish them before the next year right so it's sort of like cold think of it as cold storage not not cold but like long-term storage okay yeah thank you great um next question one i'm going to take an and ask or answer is why is the 1600 esther level uh why is the maximum 1600 esters i've actually researched this quite a bit and the short version is that back in the 1930s when the jamaican spears pools was basically trying to save the jamaican rum industry because there was there was prices have been depressed only a few few distilleries like hampton could make this this high ester rum and they were essentially trying to ensure that that other distiller that enough distilleries could continue to make rum and and sell rum if they let it go up you know it'd be like to say whatever it wanted then only a couple distilleries that could make super high rum could could sell rum and so sort of an attempt to in one one aspect to make sure that more jamaican distilleries you could continue to operate so and there's a lot more to the story which we won't go into here um next question it says says esther levels are marks are they pre-maturation stage basically i think what the question's asking is when when we say this level of this rum is this mark it has this ester level is that counted is that determined at distillation or is that determined after aging for five or ten years like which which is it it's it's it's it's a distillation well to be more to be more accurate at blending because sometimes you will have to blend to get the wrong within the parameters to meet a certain mark so that is where it is it is determined so they are pre-blended and then sent to age so the marks are developed at the distillation or the blending points then they are placed engaged right so the confusion has nothing right right so if you so if so just to give an example so if let's imagine you said this rum is is that is this l rock from lrok and it's say 400 or whatever that number is that that 400 is measured after distillation it has it's you know aging is this you know after aging the esther levels could be whatever but the rum is still the mark an ester level at what it was distilled at yes what what it was distilled okay and we find that the ester levels don't change drastically during the aging process so it would still most likely fall within your engine right yeah okay um another question um i've sort of been curious as well how much of the dock that the okay the highest or wrong highest one you make how much of it is um and if if you can share this and maybe you can't like roughly how much of it is what you you sell uh to say the european blender versus how much you use yourself in your own rooms for your own brands uh well the majority of the the majority of the dok is sold to the european market remember i said the wrong fire is is just less than ten percent of our production so at like google estas it would be it would need a lot to eat so you don't have warehouses full of dok around that you're going to age and sell i think a lot of people would love that not yet no no not not yet yeah they say yes yes yes yes no and i think a little bit further to that to that question though further and answered that question um i think there's a perception that we would know what happens to the wrong once it leaves us um we don't know what happens to it so we don't know how much of it goes into the food industry into the perfume industry into blending other rooms it's a bulk industry i mean our knowledge of what happens to the liquid after that ends hence hence our inability to guarantee anything about it after the fact right yeah you mentioned food like i know i it's sometimes it appears in ice cream like after that exactly yeah yep yeah both locally and internationally well so i've heard yeah yeah yeah i know the local brands that use us because um i have personal relationships with those manufacturers but i can only guess make an assumption for the international one same with perfume yeah and i i i was i was in grenada uh earlier this year and i had bought some ice cream and i was eating it i was like that's hampton the state i'm tasting i knew it i just knew that it was that that that aroma i knew it um okay uh next question um from vaughn it says are fair are the all the fermentation bats are they made of cedar and and roughly how old are they um not not necessarily all but the majority of the fermentation that we have here are made of syrup and some are quite old because i have been here for well let me not age myself i've been here for a while henry you look like five exactly okay if you age yourself you literally look like you're under age yeah so i've been here for a while and i have not seen some of them changed but the interesting thing is that we changed them well changing in place sounds strange but we build them back into the same positions so when one goes bad we will just remove it and rebuild it right there okay you you repair them you don't just bring brand new ones in well it's not it's not about repairing them it's we will disassemble the one that's bad and just rebuild a new one in its space okay yes so some of them are quite old but we do change them sometimes right when it's replaced it's it's replaced with local cedar okay right we don't use um cedar that's brought into the country it has to be local seeded okay uh related question um are the vats lined with pitch no no okay there there is a tradition there is a traditional method here which we inherited where um we call the cool parts that we have here have the ability of making the patterns make them so that they don't leak when you put liquid into it okay so there's no so there's no lining right and it's and sealing it naturally they don't use we don't use silicone or or any such thing to see like these yes that would defeat the purpose of it right exactly exactly right um so and i don't i don't expect you'll tell us exactly which ones but i'm pretty sure i know the answer to this is um do all of the marks use the cousin's process or only a few of them no not all of them those on the higher end we use the cousins process but some we don't use it [Music] again related question to marx um are any do you dedicate any specific skills to making specific marks like the jondor makes the likes the l rock or anything like that or so like any still can make any mark okay so um no not not not for the marks per se but for the cousins the room that we we the highest rank we make from because this process is only done in the john doe still okay so the john doe so that that that old still uh is the only one where you're doing the cousins process and recharging the retours with the the salts and stuff okay good to know um uh so we talked about the great house release which is good uh a very geeky question from adam chapman down in australia i know he teaches wset level three uh he and i shout a lot uh he wants to know what is the level of acetic acid in the cane vinegar okay so we we the the longer the decaying vintage vinegar ages the greater the acetic acid levels so um at the highest point i've seen it's five grams per liter of acid in a sample of the weekend okay so is that how is that like is that like can you can you say like more or less than sort of like um table vinegar you know like cooking you know like that about the same or more or less or to be to be fair i'm really not sure i'm really not sure okay the five five grams per liter is what is is your the high point yes okay but that that could also change if it is allowed to age for a longer period of time it can't go higher right it can be highest right so um here's an interesting question i wonder this as well um and i'll read this read the question and i'll put my my my commentary it says beyond isoamyl acetate what are the next most common esters within the hampton marks and you mentioned isoamyl acetate my my guess would be that the second besides ethyl acetate your second highest ester would be ethyl butyrate um can you can you tell okay so it's ethyl butyr so it's ethyl acetate which is always number one ethyl butyrate and then isoamyl acetate which is sort of the banana like what we what we call like fake banana flavor it's actually the real banana flavor are any any other are there any other um esters or or um other volatile compounds that are particularly um represent hampton like hampton has a lot of bees relative to other realms anything you can share on that front um okay so from our from our gc traces we noticed that there's a lot of ethylenedicanoids and ethyl octanoid which will come appropriately in our in our choices there are also other um flavor notes that we get from from organoleptic analysis which our gc doesn't necessarily pick up but they're also other very fruit like jackfruits i'm not sure if if our viewers are familiar with the jackfruit smell but we found that with a lot of jackfruit smelling oral rooms and i i'm very sensitive to that particular esther like i pick it up in a lot of rooms and hampton of course thank you um from your of your of the rums that you sell in jamaica i i assume rum fire is the most popular but um is there is there anything else you sell that's in jamaica like or is the great house selling or do you sell you know the hampton like like what's that look like that may be a christmas question for christelle yeah rum fire is definitely the most popular um for a mo for for a few different reasons but one of them is price points the age drums is just well no secondary price point but i think the lack of the lack of value for what hamlin estate is just a lack of knowledge about what anything anything other than appleton is i don't mean to i don't mean to speak i'm not speaking negatively about appleton aprilton is a brand that has cemented themselves they've spent decades and billions of dollars um cementing themselves as the rome company in jamaica um everybody else was just making bulk rome so it's it's not rocket science that when jamaicans think about rome that's what they're going to automatically think about because they've been just surrounded by its growing up and throughout throughout history um so because of that when if anybody's drinking age drum in jamaica it's going to be something that is more familiar to them there is a very small growing community of rum lovers like this like this audience here um in jamaica who those would be people that travel more that really are very much in tune with the whiskey world um and in being in being whiskey lovers they have learned that the hamdens of the world and the worthy parks of the world um and the money most of the world even though that's not that's not uh solely pot still um are things that they should be turning themselves on to so there is a small growing community of that in in jamaica but it's few and far between so definitely rom fire is our most popular product and i don't anticipate that changing anytime soon um i know that we do quite well with our sales from the from the gift shop at the estate with all of our rooms but pepe you can probably you can definitely speak more to that than i could oh yes um there's a growing audience of both for all the age rooms that we've produced um and bear in mind that hampden has just now we've been in the local market for 10 years really right and people as crystal alluded to people are getting used to having hamden wrong right what you find in jamaica is a lot of places depending on where depending on the parish you'll find that you have one particular parish particular parishes that love a certain rom so here in trelawney where hampden is made you'll find people in center limits or westmoreland that love anything from hamden okay um so i would say definitely the age products are taking off i mean i hardly have any left here so you guys gotta hurry up and come to jamaica right um and um the rum fire from its inception people loved it you know so we're definitely definitely getting to a wider audience locally right yeah it seems to me like what i from what i understand that even across the caribbean sort of it's the you know support your local team like like you drink you know you drink the rum from your nearest distillery for the most part right right right right right so it's similar it's similar to that you know that's the reason why depending on which parish you go you will see the bar is branded with the distillery that's closest it's closest to it right right um so another question from adam who which is incredibly geeky and i can almost comprehend it but i'm going to say ask her much simplified version of it um he wants to know about um he's very curious about the the cane acid portion of the wash is it is that a real relatively small percentage or that you know have to wash like like roughly how much cane acid is is in the wash um so it's anywhere between depending on what the we expect the depending on what we want the overall outcome to be it can range from as low as to 20. okay so on the lower end on the lower end because remember the acid the cane as it would will react with the alcohol in the in the fermenter and and and make estills so on the lower end we would add around five percent and be high and we'd go okay yeah and i i think it's surprised just as a historical note it's surprising when you look at the old wash recipes you know people think it's all that rum is made from molasses it was actually molasses was one of the least used ingredients like by percentage that that dunder was a big chunk of it and looked like a cane acid this big there's a big portion of it the actual molasses is fairly small in the overall mix okay okay um siobhan asked about your organoleptic process do you have a formal panel of like a tasting panel i was like so like a group of people who taste the rums and evaluate the rums like every day or every week to make sure things haven't changed do you have anything like that um well it is we try to do it per much it sometimes gets a lot much because it's a small history and as as i said we have six spot stills so we try to do it daily so based on the conditions here things won't go off verify are in that days production so we try to do an organic analysis of all the room that is made on a particular day before we make any decisions as to what to do okay um next question and and i'll just and i'll again add some commentary it says uh how many times do you reuse the cask and do you char them again and you know my thought is like you've only been aging for about 10 years you may not even gotten to the point of needing to reuse a cask you know maybe you have but like so uh kind of a barrel question yeah so the practice here is to use the casts tools that two times so if i know if we would have noticed someone did some of the cards in the pictures that we showed had it was painted in white and we generally leave that as a marker at the second view so we paint it in white so we know that it has already been used once and this is the second use so we know not to use it again i'll bet that if you had a doc and cast you could sell those staves and make some money probably probably okay uh let's see let's see question um so are the marks named after the greats who have gone before like i think people curious about these names you know if we say like you know dermot owen kelly or or or oprah [Music] altrum hussey tell you know how who who makes up these names and who decides and what what are their criteria um i'm thinking crystal is the best the best person to answer this question and she's muted i was wondering if they were frozen or if they were waiting on me and then i must amuse it again um so well obviously we have only named the two that we created so we created lfch and owh um lfch was named after my grandfather he was still alive at the time when that i believe he was still alive at the time when that was when the decision was made um to create that mark um yeah he was so that was yeah of course he was it was it was quite something for it to be named after him and the owh was after his grandfather yeah after his grandfather he also has a has a half brother whose name is from jose so um it is named after after those who have gone before us very much so and we named those two after those two because we wanted to follow in the footsteps of obviously what had been done previously not with all of the marks evidently because um some of them speak to as you would have seen in that site some of some of the acronyms speak to characteristics of the of the mark as opposed to a person but obviously the most famous one is what has become known as dark which is d-o-k for dermot owen kelly so i i quite like that because unlike other distilleries where i see they just did this they create the acronyms based on the characteristic of the liquid of the mark um we pay homage to those who have gone for us in in the process so i quite like that right and it is it is one of those things for for the jamaican geeks who know about marx is is you know these names we talked about thermado and kelly or or you know i think you know the oprah husties um in the trade these those names did not appear like in the trade it was just like these are these are three letters or four letters or two letters and it's become the sort of guessing game of people trying to figure out like what did this you know what was stce what what mark was that you know it's it's sort of uh you know people like me and and i have me to spend quite a bit of time just tracking down while all these things meant you're outside pepe looks like he's going somewhere exciting and he won't be gonna take us to the graveyard maybe we can just do another question until you get up okay um so the question is are you still connected so i think the question is are you still connected to the long pond distillery and my understanding is you have the long pond sugar estate that the husky family owns the long pond sugar estate but not the distillery can you clarify on that yeah there was a there was a just a geographical connection in that we shared a wall or we should we share at the same gate so the long pond distillery is a completely different entity to anything that we own um that what we did what we do own is a long pond sugar factory the sugar factory is no longer in operation and until you come here and you really understand the geography you would you wouldn't necessarily know this but the long pond sugar estate and the hamden distillery are about 45 minutes to drive away from each other so they're definitely separate estates it's just that we we happen to acquire them both um as a part of the same divestment process but so in short no we're not uh affiliated with the long pond distillery but we do share some of the same lines right um so it looks like pepe wants to show us something can we let's try that does but i think he has a bad kind oh there we go yeah pepe can you unmute can you hear us and unmute us all right well peppy if you can hear us jump in whatever whenever you can whenever we can you can see us um next question is uh are you now working on a full range of yearly releases of the different marks with failure or by yourself like like i think people would be very love you to like do do sort of what you've done with it like every mark every year make something available is there any thoughts or something like this and you're muted by the way crystal you're muted could you agree request nuts i didn't hear you sorry okay oh it was so good well i'll christel could not if you can hear me sorry i'm sorry sorry what was that yeah okay so a question for you is is basically the all the different hampton marks on on the yearly release like i think people would love to see you know 20 2012 owh 2013 no wh 2014 l lr okay so any sort of thought of doing this sort of like very specialized releases on a broader an ongoing basis um we'd like to but right now we're building up our stocks so that's one of the issues with um with aging you have to wait on time so and obviously we don't have any whereas some other distilleries they can you know pop in some columns still to stretch we don't have that luxury well it's not really a luxury in our case but it's not something that we would practice so we're really um the demand for our products has been astounding thanks to our rom lovers and our audience and they've definite the the demand has been i would say on par or slightly higher than originally projected so we have to spend some time increasing our stocks is that would that would that be would that be right henry although i think they're frozen a bit again yeah but that i mean these are the things that we'd like to do because we do understand what our audience um would like to see from us so we're trying to listen but so you know i don't even have one bottle of the endemic bird series if anybody wants to get me something really really nice for christmas and wants to suffer to me for any reason at all i'll give you free tours the distillery i'd be so grateful you can just hold on to it for me and i'll come and visit and pick it up yeah no yeah and i i have noticed people say like oh i saw the the the you know this bird at this store and boom that like two hours later they're all gone so um so another question for you christelle is so what triggered um your decision or the family's decision to create hampton's own brand oh you're you're muted again i know sorry i had somebody come into the office so i was trying to move multitask no go ahead sorry what trip what triggered um the huffy family's decision to create a hampton brand rather than just sort of keep doing what they've always done at the time my grandfather was still alive and it was his childhood dream to own a sugar estate i mean not so much a rom distillery sugar estate um he was a child of a farmer um he grew up actually he when he was a teenager he was a time keeper at monet mosque plantation and it was a part of his it was one of his dreams and it was a dream realized um when we took over hamden estate nobody knew anything about it and obviously because it was primarily bulk i mean that's what hamlin did hamden produced well grump um and the idea behind bonfire was well if it's so good overseas that there's such a if there's such a market for it if we're selling so much of it in bulk somebody must be drinking it so doesn't it make sense to put it in a bottle um yeah so we would have loved to have been able to start with an age drum because for us that's what we knew as very valuable but there was no age product on estate so there again he said well if it's selling so much in bulk it must be good and must be even better in a barrel so that's when we started aging so he not even really knowing very much made that decision based on just kind of guessing what the consumer would want um and so we started with rum fire as it didn't require any aging so that was the reason why we decided to incorporate brand into well branded products into our um model okay and uh another lie yeah i see pepe and i'll just jump in really quick and we'll go to pepe i promise it's sort of this is what you're talking about is a general thing we're seeing in caribbean rum that uh the move to premium to to go premium to have distillery driven brands rather than than rob that than selling bulk ram and then somebody else you know blending and selling their own brands this is this has really only taken hold in the last 20 or 30 years that that the stories are moving towards towards uh you know their own destroyer brand which is a great thing so i know people really want to see what pepe's doing so uh hey will can you make pepe full screen give me your entire screen pepe tell us what we're seeing you're muted pet peppy i don't know if you can hear me uh so yeah there's there's just pot stills yeah go ahead yeah so he's showing the pot still area and that the liquid you saw yeah the liquid here running into that um pit is the donda being uh released from the from the from the kettle at the end of a cycle okay so this is one of our pot stills i think this is one of the four sets so is the new still is it sort of in the same row as all the existing ones or did you have to find new space for it no we had taken out some of the older ones so we had space to put in the new ones okay yeah feel free to kendra feel free yes those are the retorts yeah this is female i remember this [Music] this is one of the original aging of or uh this is now used for aging if i remember correctly or is this blending no this is this is a part of infirmity this is a part of the deformation oh interesting okay if you can note on both sides of the corridor right there okay and this knows the front of the distillery he's waving at us all right well thank you everybody um if we if well i see pepe has a better better signal now so i think he's coming in the office so um great um i know there's more questions here but i i know where we're sort of running prolonged already and i think we've we've covered an incredible amount of ground so i want to thank christelle kenrey ken kenroy and pepe so much for sharing so much with us over the past 90 minutes so um anything you want to say before we have will take us out just thank you everybody for tuning in and thank you ken roy and pepe for being such i'm gonna i want you to say your final words after i didn't want to be the last person to talk before with um thank you for being so helpful in creating the presentation and thanks to you as well matt um and thank you for also every time i talk to kenori i learned something new it's like i definitely do not feel like the smartest person in the room when i'm with you um but we really appreciate and and um my mom sent me a message she she's using her ipads she couldn't figure out how to type into the chat box and mommy sent to tell you both that you were excellent and she's so proud so my mom and my dad are watching us um they took off from their work day to watch us so that's quite exciting thanks to everybody for your support and your encouragement in the business community in the rom community it's not an easy time right now just all around remain resilient and keep supporting hamden i'll hopefully return to the circuit in 2022 a little bit here and there and i would love to also invite at some point in time kenroy and pepe at different intervals to introduce them to the international markets at the same time because i think it's important so this is a good start but get used to seeing them and i will and and i had one more thing to say oh if there are any questions that you guys have that didn't get answered um you can just send them to us by direct message on instagram and i will filter them to the right people at the distillery even if they're um and kenroy would be happy to answer and pippy once they get a chance so just send direct to instagram and i can always put you on to the right right people so yeah that's it from me you guys want to say anything all right um just to say thanks for having us thanks for being for coming into the hamden family and allowing us to explain how it is that the magic is made here and i'm sure people will want to invite you to come and experience it for most definitely um anytime you guys are coming to jamaica make sure you come here we're always happy to get you guys here at hampden to see the magic first hat you know it's the best way all right and as crystal and and uh ken roy said thank you guys for sharing your day with us you know listening to us about about handling and and and the magic has been going on now for we hope that you guys will come through and continue to take some good hand and grow so thank you thank you for hosting us thank you for having us thank you for listening to us and hope to see you here soon oh well uh so so actually will will has a link ready to show you um so so we're actually in more spa what we're doing here with wurstva we have sort of two different tracks one are these rum talk sessions which we have which we're going into distilleries but also as well we're doing what we call our icon series which is essentially for worst was 50th anniversary we are talking to uh icons of kirby and rum the people who have influenced um caribbean ram including jamaican rum we've talked to lloyd forbes we've talked to evan brown uh coming up i think it's and will will correct me i think it's uh september 23rd uh we're gonna talk to frank ward uh of mount gay former former worship chairman and an all-around uh wonderful guy so we'll be chatting ward with frank warren so yeah i'm really excited about that one i just posted the the link where you can register for that in the chat so uh be sure to do that but um yeah just to echo everything matt said and i think i know christelle you were looking at all the comments that were coming through uh kenroy and pepe i don't know if you guys could see those but people were really overwhelmed and uh just had such a great time learning from everyone so thank you so much for uh for taking the time to do that and to drop the uh the great house news i know um i this this just started showing up in nashville when this release came out i live in nashville and people here were like over the moon excited at hampton finally being available around here so i know i'm gonna be rationing what little bit i have left just so i can compare it to the the new vintage that's coming out uh so i'm really excited about that but uh yeah thank you so much everyone and uh we will see you in a couple of weeks for uh the session with frank ward so looking forward to that okay thank you everybody take care thanks bye all right you