{"id":55791,"date":"2018-03-12T11:19:36","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T11:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test10.co.za\/C\/?p=55791"},"modified":"2018-03-16T10:09:42","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T10:09:42","slug":"carol-homer-caesar-master-blender-house-angostura-rum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test10.co.za\/C\/carol-homer-caesar-master-blender-house-angostura-rum\/","title":{"rendered":"Rum Diaries with the Master Blender at the House of Angostura Rum"},"content":{"rendered":"

The rum revolution is underway, with the popularity of this fun drink on a significant upswing. Leah van Deventer went all the way to the Caribbean, the historic home of rum, to chat to Master Blender at Angostura Rum, Carol Homer-Caesar, to find out about the art \u00ad\u2013 and science \u2013 behind rum blending.\"angostura<\/a><\/p>\n

Q&A\u00a0Carol Homer-Caesar,\u00a0Angostura Rum<\/h3>\n

How long have you been with Angostura?<\/h4>\n

This year will be 23 years.<\/p>\n

Did you start in a different position and work your way up?<\/h4>\n

Yes, I started as head of the laboratory, doing new product development, research and development and quality control. Then I ended up being responsible for the quality systems too, which is our ISO certification, as well as our health and safety and our laboratory accreditation. And now blending has been added to my portfolio.<\/p>\n

\"Rum<\/p>\n

Generally, the liquor industry is male-dominated. Have you felt your gender has affected your work, whether positively or negatively?<\/h4>\n

Well, actually at Angostura Rum, 75% of our management staff is women. My predecessor was a woman as well, so my gender didn\u2019t affect me in any way, you know, in terms of being the head of a department in production operations. Interestingly enough, the new head of bottling is also female, and so was her<\/em> predecessor. So we\u2019ve never really had any sort of resistance at Angostura Rum. In fact, we have a female CEO now too, for the first time.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s wonderful, and it makes sense since women actually have more refined palates! Do you think it\u2019s the same throughout the rum industry?<\/h4>\n

I would have to say the rum industry is more male-dominated. With our West Indies Rum and Spirits Producers’ Association<\/a>, there are only two female directors presently. Then there are probably 10 or 15 members who represent their distilleries, and again only two of them are female. But while it is male-dominated, I must say, within the West Indies group we are<\/em> respected. I do a lot of lectures for them, and we have a lot of technical workshops, and I\u2019ve never felt that I didn\u2019t have a place there.<\/p>\n

\"angostura<\/a><\/p>\n

In terms of the art and science of blending, what would you say the ratio is? How much is technical skill and how much is up to your nose and palate?<\/h4>\n

I would say the sensory side of it is more. If I were to put a ratio on it I would say at least 60% is what you smell and taste, and what you craft to end up at a particular style of rum. Then 40% you have to monitor, you have to test, and you also have to create a controlled environment to end up with a consistently high-quality rum. You have to have controls in place.<\/p>\n

If 60% is up to personal skills, is it difficult to maintain consistency when one master blender takes over from another?<\/h4>\n

Um, no, because for example although I\u2019m I charge of blending, the blenders below me are trained by me, and they know that there is a procedure, a process to follow. For us, because we are ISO certified \u2013 we\u2019re also safety certified \u2013 everything we do is well documented. So from one blender to the next, we\u2019d be following the same protocol.<\/p>\n

So, if I had to buy a bottle of Angostura 1919 rum that was produced in 2015 and another that was produced last year, they\u2019d taste the same?<\/h4>\n

Yes, they would have one flavour profile.<\/p>\n

How are new rums developed?<\/h4>\n

Our new product development is marketing driven, so they\u2019ll present us with a product brief, which will state the profile they would like. They\u2019d say whether they want a light or medium-bodied rum, whether they want layers of cream in the notes, whether they want a Cognac, bourbon or sherry finish, whether they want it to have a fruity background or if there\u2019s a particular top note they want. So we\u2019d work with that. Sometimes there may be products in the market they\u2019d like us to benchmark, so then, of course, we\u2019d analyse the benchmarks. But from experience, we\u2019d have a sense of what style of rum they\u2019re looking for, with or without a benchmark.<\/p>\n

<\/div>
<\/div><\/div>\n

Tell us about the blending process of Angostura Rum.<\/h4>\n

Once we have our brief we pick our aged rums. We monitor the ageing of our rums in terms of both sensory evaluations and chemical testing, so we have what you might call a history of all the rums we put into ageing. We know what each type of aged rum looks like, tastes like, smells like.<\/p>\n

Using this inventory, ageing and warehousing pull pallets of the aged rums, and then the lab withdraws samples and runs tests, like gas chromatography, to check their flavour profiles and make sure none of the rum is sour.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll then bring them together in prototypes \u2013 at least four \u2013 and present them to marketing. They do blind tastings and decide which one is most along the lines of what they want. Then we do a pilot blend, which we send to our agents and distributors for feedback. We pool the information and run statistics, and then we decide what the final blend should be.<\/p>\n

Wow, it\u2019s a quite a process! What else do you have to consider?<\/h4>\n

[Laughs] Yes! We also have to do shelf-life testing, and decide if the rum will be chill filtered, or if we have to do double filtration, or whether we need to put the blend back in a cask and age it\u2026 all those decisions need to be made along the way to be able to craft a specific style of rum.<\/p>\n

\"Rum<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019ve always imagined a blender physically tinkering with different ratios of rum \u2013 adding a bit of this and a bit of that\u00a0 \u2013 until they have a winner. Is that how it works?<\/h4>\n

Yes, at the lab level. Then it\u2019s bulked and put together in a huge vat.<\/p>\n

Do you have any personal favourites when it comes to flavour profiles?<\/h4>\n

I particularly like the Angostura 1919, because it\u2019s light bodied and you can have it with soda water, with coconut water, or neat. And it makes for diverse cocktails, so it\u2019s versatile. I also like our 15YO, the Angostura 1787, and that I\u2019ll drink neat or on the rocks. I like to pair that with 75% dark chocolate.<\/p>\n

angostura.com<\/a> | Facebook<\/a> | Twitter<\/a> | Instagram<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rum revolution is underway, with the popularity of this fun drink on a significant upswing. Leah van Deventer went all the way to the Caribbean, the historic home of rum, to chat to Master Blender at Angostura Rum, Carol Homer-Caesar, to find out about the art \u00ad\u2013 and science \u2013 behind rum blending. Q&A\u00a0Carol Homer-Caesar,\u00a0Angostura Rum How long have you been with Angostura? This year will be 23 years. Did you start in a different position and work your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4974,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"acf":[],"brand_slug":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test10.co.za\/C\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test10.co.za\/C\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test10.co.za\/C\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test10.co.za\/C\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4974"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test10.co.za\/C\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test10.co.za\/C\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test10.co.za\/C\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test10.co.za\/C\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test10.co.za\/C\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}