106: Kuleana Rum Works: Discovering the Big Island's Take on Hawaiian Rum with Steve Jefferson

In this episode, we sat down with Steve Jefferson, co-founder and CEO of Kuleana Rum Works, a distillery on Hawaii's Big Island that's putting their own spin on fresh cane juice rum. From growing their own heirloom Hawaiian sugarcane to sourcing and blending rums from around the world, they have a unique approach that's resulting in some pretty damn good rum. We chatted about:

• Going from sailing around the Caribbean to starting a rum distillery in Hawaii

• Working with a 30+ year veteran of Martinique rhum agricole on Kuleana's production process

• The big gamble Steve made to acquire the 45 acres that became Kuleana's farm

• Nerdy production and still design details

• The current state of their aging program

• How they plan to utilize the 35 varieties of heirloom Hawaiian sugarcane

• Their relationship with Ko Hana on Oahu

• Why Kuleana sources and blends rums from around the world in addition to distilling their own

• Their connection to High West Whiskey

• Their crowdsourced funding campaign

• And more!

Plus, at the beginning, some rambling thoughts on John's travels in Italy, amaro, chasing the solar eclipse, and the impact of minor ABV differences.

You can check out Kuleana's website here (which also has a link to their funding campaign): https://kuleanarum.com/

P.S. Did you know you can support The Rumcast on Patreon now and get bonus episodes, happy hours, and more? You can! Head to patreon.com/therumcast to check it out.

Episode Transcript

John Gulla 0:11

Hello everyone and welcome to the Rumcast, the podcast that talks all things related with the people who love and shape it. My name is John Gulla and with me in the virtual broadcasting booth here is Mr. Will Hoekenga. And today we have the pleasure of digging deep into the subject of Hawaiian rum and sugar cane cultivation with Steve Jefferson, co founder and CEO of Kuleana Rum Works. But first we'll I wanted to thank you first for carrying the previous episode with Ben from Islay Rum Company while I was out on vacation galavanting around Italy, it took me more than a week to recover. But I'm happy to report that I have some good memories from it. And thank you for taking care of that. Yeah,

Will Hoekenga 0:51

what? What give us the highlights, you know, everyone's expecting you to come back from Italy, you know, loaded down with suitcases full of amazing, you know, incredible independently bottled rum products that are only available in Europe. So so so bring us up to speed what happened? So

John Gulla 1:08

apparently, I need some coaching with that, because I did not accomplish the mission. With that. We traveled very light number one. And although somebody came up with a great suggestion of saying like, No, you put a suitcase in a suitcase and that way, which is an awesome suggestion, but we did not do that. So really didn't bring anything home that I would love to talk about, which saddens me because in my head, I was going to come back and have like fabulous Rome stories and tell you about strange rooms and cool things that I found. But unfortunately, what I saw there was and I don't know if this is just because we were in certain areas within the cities like that are very touristy Central, because we stayed very nearby. We did by the way we did Florence, Venice, Verona, and Milan. So in those cities, we were very centrally located. And what I saw was Havana Club, El Dorado, Bacardi, Diplomatico, nothing that really struck me as like something like ooh, and even on the menus, where we went to eat, I was hoping to find some different things on drink menus, nothing really there.

Will Hoekenga 2:08

You got to do your homework. Is this the lesson? Yeah, you got to do your homework.

John Gulla 2:12

And maybe I should have just taken the Uber ride to the to the place we knew, you know, had good suggestions, but I just didn't do that. So you know, sadly, it wasn't a rum focus trip as much as I would have wanted it to be, at least in some way, shape, or form. I was gonna say I did find a newfound appreciation or a deepened appreciation for what I would consider a complementary category to rum spirits. And in some ways, it even has similarities with challenges in the market for rum. And that is Amaro,

Will Hoekenga 2:41

so that was going to be my guest, but I didn't want to spoil it. Okay. Yeah. So

John Gulla 2:46

I found really interesting expressions of amaro both on menus at restaurants we went to and stores when I peeked in once in a while, and I had a quick minute, I'm looking at themes. These are models I'd never heard of, and are super interesting. And then that led me on to like, really quickly looking and saying like, Well, wait, let me find out a little bit more about this. And I'm sure you know a lot more about this. I think well then,

Will Hoekenga 3:09

based I don't know me too much credit.

John Gulla 3:12

Well, like rum in certain ways. I don't want to make too heavy a comparison here. But like rum in certain ways. There's different categories of Amaro, right, so you can dig deeper into well, there's the, you know, a morose that are more like a Campari, which I know you're a huge fan of, and I'm not and still I'm not by the way, I went to the Kemper Arena bar in Milan, and still don't like it.

Will Hoekenga 3:32

Was it like a Campari themed bar? Basically,

John Gulla 3:35

I think it's where it's owned by Campari. Okay, and it's in the square of the Milan where the Duomo is, and it

Will Hoekenga 3:42

can appreciate it there. If you can't appreciate it there, then it's just not for you. I think it's just

John Gulla 3:47

not for me, after all Aperol Spritz, I can I can, I'm okay with it. You know, like, it's still not just not my thing, but those are considered a Moro by many people. But then there's this other type of Amaro, that's much more of a sweet type of DSTV like the

Will Hoekenga 4:01

darker kind of, I probably sound like someone talking about I probably sound like someone talking about like dark rum or something. Like yeah, but darker was we were total

John Gulla 4:09

Amari noobs here. But yeah, and then there's fernet, right, which is also considered so there's like all these different things in this one category. And I'm in for it, man, I found some really some ones that I loved. Have you ever heard of the REM Azadi, and I've

Will Hoekenga 4:26

I'm familiar with it and maybe I've had a cocktail here and there, but I've seen the thing for me is I've kept amaro at an arm's length because I enjoy it so much that I know if I like if I if I put a toe in the water, I'm gonna fall all the way down the rabbit hole and want to taste like 50 different mros And I just don't have the time space or energy to do that, you know, while maintaining this whole run thing we've got going so you know, I'm saving it for retirement or something. I think,

John Gulla 4:56

you know, I'm with you there but I don't have the have willpower to resist some notation there, I already made an order for tomorrow's to come in some different ones. There you go. It's not going to take room space away. It'll probably take like, you know, Bourbon space away. Yeah, just say but from my bar, but I think they work really well together in some of those cocktails that I didn't expect. So I'm excited to keep diving into that category as complementary to, to my rum obsession. And it

Will Hoekenga 5:24

comes with a built in excuse for having it, you know, after a meal, you know, you don't have to feel bad for having an extra drink. Because you're like, it helps me digest

John Gulla 5:31

just to help. I'm with you. Yeah, absolutely. It's the bitters that, you know, do this thing. I don't know, they tell the story that like, make your system. I don't know that I believe that. But I do enjoy it.

Will Hoekenga 5:43

I have no idea if it works or not. But you know, I keep telling myself that it does. Well, I'm glad that you found found something, you know, in the spirits realm. While you were there, I'm sure you encountered much more, you know, moving artwork and architecture and cultural youth and all that good stuff. But it's a different podcast. Yeah. But before we get to the interview, one thing I want us to discuss is, well, first of all, I'll ask you, are you going to remember where you were on Monday? This past week, John?

John Gulla 6:10

No, wait, I'm trying to think really hard about what was Monday of this past week? Oh, the eclipse is that the eclipse is the Eclipse. Okay. Well, I mean, first of all, here, it was kind of a non event in South Florida. Yes. We had a little bit of transit coverage. Yes. But not much to really speak about. So that's why probably, but go ahead. Um, have you ever

Will Hoekenga 6:32

have you ever experienced in Eclipse in the path of totality, John? Yes.

John Gulla 6:36

There was one that happened a few years back when my girls were younger. And I just remember what time was it? Yes. When I was telling them like I was more concerned than anything that they were going to burn their eyeballs by looking at it, right. So I just remember telling them like, you can't look at it unless you have this stuff, you know, and all that. But we enjoyed it. It was fine. You know what I thought was cooler than anything else. The shadows that are made with the circular like, we like the little pinhole thing. Yeah, those are pretty cool. So yeah, so you Yeah, I the

Will Hoekenga 7:05

the 2017 Eclipse came right through Nashville, we were in the path of totality. So I experienced, you know, the mid afternoon total darkness, hearing the sounds of the crickets and stuff coming out in the middle afternoon, because they think it's nighttime. It was just one of the coolest natural experiences that that I've had. And I think the last one before that was in the early 90s. And I have very early childhood memories of seeing that, but obviously I don't remember that much about it. So anyway, when I saw that Nashville was just outside the path of totality for this eclipse that we have this past Monday, I think Nashville is that like about 90% coverage or so. But you're pretty close. Yes, yeah, just a few hours over in Kentucky, there was going to be complete totality. And you know what I was like, it's on a Monday, but I've got you know, a bit of a flexible schedule. I'm just going to drive out there and I'm going to experience it myself. I'm going to find a little back road away from people just gonna go out there, pull over and take it all in experience this, you know, have a moment. The next one's not going to come through the US until two decades from now, John, who knows I'll even be alive then. You know, yeah, I mean, hopefully so but no one knows what the future holds. So why not? And so anyway, 10am 10am Monday morning, I set out from Nashville, I need to drive about two and a half hours northwest into Kentucky. I'm aiming for a little outside Paducah. And I quickly discover that there are many, many, many, many, many more people interested in seeing the total eclipse than I anticipated. Google Maps is telling me everything is just backed up. I'm trying to go 24 West it's saying Get off 24 West don't even try it. It's taking me through all these back roads. I'm running into traffic on the back roads just complete standstill. I'm sitting in the middle of a neighborhood that I'm cutting through just at a standstill for 10 minutes. You know, I've been driving or in the on in the car for three hours and I've like barely even I'm not even in Kentucky yet.

John Gulla 9:06

And now you're racing the moon right clock is ticking. Yes. And so I'm like, you know, how

Will Hoekenga 9:11

am I what am I going to do? I just start taking backroads and heading generally Northwest okay, I'm just like, I It's too late to turn back now I'm just going to drive as far northwest as I can and hopefully by two o'clock I will be close enough to experience totality. So anyway, I'm driving it's about 130 and like okay, I need to find a stopping point. I don't think I'm quite there yet, but I'm just gonna like find a good place to stop take this all in you know, I'm passing it's one of those cool things where this is one of the rare occasions where it feels like a truly shared experience that everyone around you is going through at the same time that isn't some sort of like, you know, disaster or something right. And you know, I

John Gulla 9:50

think it would double rainbow guy but like with a lot of people Yeah, like just I'm seeing

Will Hoekenga 9:55

like I'm driving through all these little small Kentucky towns. I'm seeing people in folding chairs and church parking. Lots and like little, you know, all the all these people coming out to see this thing. It's a very cool moment. So anyway, I pass through this little tiny town called Canton, Kentucky, I end up seeing this big bridge going across what turns out to be the Cumberland River, which also actually runs right through the heart of downtown Nashville. So it's a little bit like I'm coming full circle, like, wow, this would be a great place to view the clips from and I pull up, I see a sign that says Land Between The Lakes natural recreation area, there's a parking lot, which somehow isn't full. And I'm like, wow, this is perfect. I pull over, I get out of the car, I walk across the bridge, I go over, I'm right on the waterfront, the clouds have all parted it was a cloudy day, but then the clouds parted. And the sun is just shining. And I've got my glasses, there's only a couple people around me. Also, they were people who had been trying to travel to Kentucky and got stranded in the same traffic as me and, you know, improvise. So we're all kind of going through this together. And you know, I pull up my phone, and I go to NASA's little tracker to show you like, are you in the path of totality? How much coverage and it says that I am about at I think like 99.5% coverage or something like that. And so I you know, I'm chatting with the people around me, I'm like, you know, do we do you think we'll get a little bit of total darkness, you know, being this close? And everyone's like, yeah, maybe yeah, like we're trying to, you know, be positive. And so none

John Gulla 11:24

of you said run that way.

Will Hoekenga 11:28

Yeah, unfortunately, I think you were still probably another 30 minute drive for me. 100%. But anyway, so I'm watching I'm using the glasses and total darkness does not happen. But there is a cool kind of cool phenomenon of it. Even when just that little sliver of the Sun is visible to the naked eye, it looks like the sun is just as big as it always is, you know, but the actual effect of the light, it's almost like you're using a photo editor app, and you just turn the brightness all the way down. Like everything just got really dim but when the sun fully out, so it was this really almost eerie kind of effect. It was very cool. I was glad I was there. But John, what does this all have to do with rum? What it has to do with is that was drinking littles. I was not drinking about the Eclipse, but I was trying to think of some fun way to incorporate that. But now Okay, okay, that little 1% Difference made all the difference. Hmm. And, you know, you and I, a lot of times when we're talking about discussions of ABV, we often bring up 80 Proof rums, we just, we just wish they were a little bit higher ABV a lot of the times because even going from 40 to 43% ABV to us can make a big difference, not just in like, oh, we want this to be stronger, it's more about accentuating flavors a little better, you know, giving it a little more body, that kind of thing, feeling a little less diluted on the palate. Anyway, this is a point that we've brought up again and again on the podcast. And I bring it up now because we got a very, very thoughtful in depth email from an avid listener of the show named John, who wanted to push back on our idea of these small ABV differences a little bit. And he puts so much time and energy into the email, I think it set the record for longest email the podcast has ever received, it was about 3000 words, it had a table, it had a Background section and have a summary. It was like an academic paper. And, like, I don't want it to sound like I'm complaining about someone sending us a long email. I loved it. I like when people go to that much detail and like, bring all the scientific facts and stuff. It's amazing. I you know, it's amazing to me that people listen to the show and care enough to send something in with that much care. And I could tell from reading that John had a lot of critical tasting experience, industry experience. And the I think the main thrust, I'll try to, you know, summarize the 3000 word email without, you know, butchering the service. Yeah, I don't want to do it a disservice. But the main thrust of it was that he thinks that differences as small as the difference between 40% abv and 43% ABV don't actually make a large enough difference to really be detectable. There was a quote, he said, There is no meaningful difference between 37% 37 and a half 3840 or 43. And that, to me was kind of like, you know, there was there was lots of kind of like scientific research and stuff and it's stuff cited to support this. It wasn't just someone firing off a you know, oh, like I don't, I don't taste the difference. No one can taste the difference. It wasn't like that at all. It was very smart and well crafted. And that led me to have kind of like a crisis of belief, like have have I just been fooling myself in this idea that I can actually taste the difference between 43% and 40%. Because there have been times where I've had the same spirit at that's been diluted to different proof points, you know, that have that small of a difference. And to me, maybe it's because I already know Whoo, there's a difference that was I right? Yeah, it wasn't blind. So maybe it's just my brain telling me that I prefer the other one. So what I wanted to the reason the whole reason I'm bringing this up, it's not to be like, you know, I'm not trying to, I'm not looking for validation or anything necessarily, I just want to know, because we have a lot of smart people who listen to the podcast, people that know more about rum than we do people who have tasted more rum than we do. People who have done more critically critical tasting than we do. I'd love to just crowdsource more opinions on this, like our, our John and I putting too much emphasis on the small differences in ABV, or does it actually make a big difference going from 40 to 43. And I like I don't think there are universal rules for this stuff. I think there are absolutely rooms out there that like if you increase them from 40 to 43, there probably isn't that much difference. But my just my own experience of of drinking tells me that like I've had rums where it would make a big difference. And so I'm just trying to crowdsource opinions. I want more 3000 word emails on this on this topic, I want us to be able to like publish a little, little book of just email chapters of various takes on this so logy an anthology, exactly. I'm wanting to hear more about this, because, like, if it is something that's mostly in my head, I you know, I should probably stop complaining so much about it. But I just want to know what what the what the listeners out there. Thanks. So send us an email hosted rom cast.com HLS. T at rom cast.com. And let us know, do small differences in ABV on the lower end going from 40 to 43. Can that make a big difference? And I'm not just talking about like in terms of more burn or anything like that I'm talking about like making a rum more flavorful by adding a little bit less water to it when you're proving it down. Let us know what you think. I'd love to hear more opinions on this.

John Gulla 16:54

Yeah, I'm with you. I want to hear people's opinions on this, I kind of am leaning towards where you are with, I feel like right, I don't have anything else to say. But that I feel like that there is differences that I've experienced before. And I'm a scientific and a philosophical guy, as I think you know, you know, at but in this case, the practical reality of what I feel like I've experienced outweighs that, you know, so that I'm interested in you to hear people's responses. And I would say look, it doesn't have to be a 3000 word email, if you want to send us a short email about some things that you think you know, you can you can make some arguments on do that, too. But yeah, so we

Will Hoekenga 17:33

expect we accept 1000 word emails we accepts 500 word emails, really any link? Yeah,

John Gulla 17:39

three word emails. Why bother? Don't think? Yeah. So anyways, I look forward to people's opinions on it. Why don't we I guess, cut to break so we can get to our interview with Steve as soon and actually I will. Before we do that it was there anything you wanted to set up with that?

Will Hoekenga 17:52

Oh, yeah, just you know, we have talked about Hawaiian rum several times. But we've had Kohana on the podcast. kuleana is on the Big Island. And I think they've they've been in business for a while, I think they've really been, you know, putting the rum at them out, putting their rum on the market for a little over five years now or so. And heard great things about it. You know, Jeff Berry is a big proponent of their stuff. It's rum made from fresh sugarcane juice, they're growing cane, they're taking an approach using a lot of heirloom cane varietals that were brought to Hawaii 1000s and 1000s of years ago or not 1000s And 1000s was just, let's say maybe like 1000, something like that, you know, I don't know the exact timeline, but a long time time ago, hundreds of years ago, hundreds of years ago, I feel safe with that. And you know, in those kind of fell out of fashion in favor of the type of sugar cane that works with, you know, industrial sugar production and that sort of thing, which obviously, that industry has since died in Hawaii. So they're bringing back these canes, which which is you know, similar to what Kohana is doing, but they're they're rum actually, I hadn't spend that much time with their rum just because it's not available near me. And they were kind enough to send us some samples. And I really enjoyed what I tried. And one thing that struck me was just how different it is from what Kohana is doing. Yeah, because they're using similar types of cane. Obviously, there's like a, there's like 35 varieties, or maybe 40 or something like that. And so you know, there are differences and Kohana is on Oahu. kuleana is on the Big Island. So different environments. But it's cool to see a different take, I would say Kuleana's unaged cane juice rum is it's on the the very approachable scale of cane juice, rum, I think, right? It's not lacking

John Gulla 19:37

in flavor Exactly.

Will Hoekenga 19:39

either. It's that it's that line. And I think I talked about this in the previous episode when I was talking to Ben from Isla rum. That line of interesting but also approachable is really hard to do, I think and I think they do it with their rum. I think it's a great introduction to cane juice, rum for people but also not something where it's like if you already are inducted and just rum. You won't enjoy it, you know? Right. So really nice fruitiness Steve talks about how like their, their main thing they're going for is is floral and fruity in their rum, which I thought was interesting hearing him. They also just have a fascinating backstory and kind of, you know, philosophy when it comes to blending, like source roms from around the world and put those out in blends and even some single cask stuff as well. And yeah, they're doing a lot of exciting stuff. There's really cool stuff happening in Hawaiian rum. And so I'm excited for people to hear the episode. Yeah,

John Gulla 20:31

every now and then you have even we who try a lot of different rooms have a kind of a blind spot. And yes, this is one that I had been meaning to try for a long time that I thought would be really worthwhile. And turns out that it really is, as you said, I mean, I really enjoyed the product and think it's something that I wish was more available. And hopefully, as Steve talks to us about starting to expand in its distribution. So for sure, I'm great to have him on and good to talk about all that. And we'll cut over to that now.

Will Hoekenga 21:06

All right, we are here with Steve Jefferson of kuleana rum works, who we were just talking about this, Steve, I've interviewed you a couple of times, but never specifically for this podcast. I know during the pandemic years, we did some live streams, and I was going back and actually watching one of them. And it was one where we got a tour of like a live tour of the cane fields. And I think it might be one of the most beautiful places on Earth, just kind of reflecting on that view of the ocean, the kind of sweeping countryside there on the Big Island. But we finally have you here on the rum cast. So John and I are very happy that you're here. Welcome to the show. Thank

Steve Jefferson 21:42

you. I'm super, super stoked to be here. Big fan of your shows. Yeah, that was a really fun day when we do that. And I have to admit, I mean, I don't get to work there. So it's not that much bragging. But that is one of the nicest spots. Yeah, on the planet. I mean, that's, you know, I mean, isn't that where you want your rum to come from?

Will Hoekenga 22:00

It's very idyllic for sure. Yeah. And it's, you know, Hawaii is not wanting for beautiful landscapes. But that is definitely one of the more beautiful ones that I've seen. And I've only seen it through a computer screen. So imagine what it would be like if I was there in person right now, but we're working on it. You know, I kind of want to back up a little bit and talk about how kuleana came to be we're going to talk about like a whole lot of stuff here. But I want to start at the beginning. And I've heard the short version of the origin story, like you know, you're sailing around the Caribbean with your family, you fall in love with rum Agricole, and Martinique and kind of think, hey, it'd be a great idea to do a similar kind of rum in Hawaii. But like, it seems like a whole bunch of steps need to happen between that idea and actually having Yeah, and actually having rum coming off the still so like, what were the first few steps you had to do coming back after, you know, living on a boat for a while? How do you what what are steps one, two, and three for starting a rum distillery in Hawaii that is going to make rum from fresh sugarcane juice?

Steve Jefferson 23:06

Yeah, no, that's a really good question. So to your point, on the way back from having that good idea and committing that we're gonna move back to start this rum distillery, the economic downturn, sort of we were on the boat, because we sort of foresaw the economic downturn and housing.

Will Hoekenga 23:22

So it was this was like, 2007 2008. Yeah, so

Steve Jefferson 23:24

we took off in 2006, because we can see that the housing market was peaking. Okay. We thought, Okay, it's time to it's time to bail. And and what we didn't realize is that it was being sort of hyper inflated with with the CDOs. And all these other crazy financial instruments that caused so you weren't

Will Hoekenga 23:41

you weren't quite on like Big Short level of foresight. Exactly. Exactly.

Steve Jefferson 23:45

Like we knew to short it, but we didn't realize how much it needed to be shorted. So when we got back, we're traveling across the country, literally to go to Hawaii, you know, because we had our stuff and we're driving our stuff back across country so we could fly from California back to Hawaii. I start seeing foreclosures in every state. And I used to be a business reporter. I'm like foreclosures mean, the economy's gonna blow up in six months in that area. Yeah. And, and as that as we're traveling around, I see every single state that we go to, on their newspapers, foreclosed record foreclosure. I'm like, I looked at my wife and I said something bad. Something bad's happening. So we quickly decided, Okay, we got to buy a house somewhere on the mainland. And so we picked a house we picked Boulder Colorado, because we thought that was going to be like the best spot to be. Okay. Yeah, it's a nice place. And, and, and sure enough, I mean, I think we were the last loan that Wells Fargo wrote, we literally had to like slide it underneath a door. He said, You know, you're approved. But after midnight, Wells Fargo is shutting down homework. And we're like, wow, you said at midnight tomorrow morning, we're going to announce that we're out of the mortgage business indefinitely. So Wow. Yeah, like sure we want to do this

Will Hoekenga 24:59

Just a bit late. Yeah, like a big gulp kind of moment. Craziness is

Steve Jefferson 25:03

they gave us a loan. For two years, I don't have a job, and we still got a home mortgage. So that was the problem. Right. And I knew that was the problem, but I, you know, so so we did that. And then and then we really started doing the research. We discovered the the steelmakers there, Rocky Mountain Moonship, no rock a mile high distillery my. So they make these really cool stills out of I think originally they started making out of milk cartons. Okay. And then they put columns on him and stuff. So we bought one of those. And, you know, we basically moved back to Hawaii learned how to learn how to, you know, waited for the economy to settle down a little bit. So 2012 We moved back to Hawaii brought the still with us learn how to use the still, you know, yelling at the kids turn down the water turn off to I mean, you know, you come to show on us. And, and and slowly we figured it out. And then and then we knew we wanted to make it from fresh sugarcane juice. So we had to approximate what fresh sugarcane juice might be like without having any yet. Wow. And so we made mixtures of brown sugar and molasses and water. And we just tried to come up with that. And, and you know, long story short, we started making sugar cane, in fact, actually have one of the original bottles. No, no way. This isn't a prop. This is just my office. So. So company we thought was cool. It was just called company rum. Because we didn't share it. We weren't sure what the name should be. So we've made and it turns out, you're not allowed to call yourself rum company. There's there's a rule against names. They have to have a name. So we call herself company, right? It's within Ah, yeah. And then so so this one was named Hamakua. Farrell, because Hamakua was an old sugarcane area. Okay. And so we were just cutting sugar cane on the side of the road. That was Ferrell and making rum agricole from it. And we're like, this stuff's pretty good. And you know, and we didn't have bottles, of course, and, you know, so So I worked out a deal with the with the local liquor store where they just gave me gross. You know, I had to drink the beer in order to get the bottles. It is such a bummer. And most original bottles and we just started marketing this around and sharing it with people and people got excited. And we're like, Oh, that's cool. And we partner with our friends the schlub. So Chris and Laura slob. So there's basically four of us just learning how to make rum Agricole, we got better out, we started aging it and learning, you know, we made a bunch of mistakes. And then people got more and more excited about it. And then we and then we ran into this guy. Somebody told us about this guy named Noa Lincoln. And no Lincoln was getting his PhD in the field system. He discovered clients that actually developed 35 varieties of sugarcane from the original two or three that came at them from the canoes. When they settled Hawaii 1000 years ago. Yep. And I was born and raised and why my dad was born and raised in why, like, I didn't know anybody that knew that the Hawaiians actually grew, and had their own varieties of sugarcane, real thought that the planters brought it with them. It

Will Hoekenga 28:00

was more of like a modern, you know, yeah, industrial.

Steve Jefferson 28:04

We're bringing sugarcane with us. And that's totally not what happened. So now I got his PhD proving that that the ones that actually come up with about 35 unique varieties from the two or three that they original. So we're like, that's the best story ever. So we started cutting nose, got cuttings of those and started replanting them. And now we've got this heirloom crop that was almost forgotten. And they're beautiful sugar canes. I'm looking around and wondering if I have a book here. Here's here's the picture. I love that my crops are so readily I

Will Hoekenga 28:31

know. Yeah, they're right behind you. Yeah, I actually I ordered a copy of Noah's book. And there's so many like the the variety. The varieties are so picturesque, almost so vibrant. Yeah. And they're so different.

Steve Jefferson 28:45

Yeah, they're beautiful. So this one's sort of this bright, pinkish purple. Yeah, color to your point. There's some that are almost black, there's some lots of stripes. It was epic. So anyway, so. So we learned about kings. And not only was it a fantastic story, but but these are epic sugar canes. I mean, the flavors on them are unbelievable. And then I realized that this was the last first of all ROM has to be made from sugarcane. And we just happened upon arguably a cache of sugar cane. That is actually the last of the develop sugar canes from the people that develop sugar cane from nothing. So over millennia, the Pacific Islanders have been discovering and cultivating these sugar canes and developing them into new plants. And this was the last group that had ever been so this is the pinnacle of sugarcane being developed for human consumption because it's a delicious, beautiful plant as opposed to let's rip the sucrose out of it and then sell it and sodas or whatever. So, these these plants are gorgeous, physically, you know, and the flavors are crazy. So we knew we were onto something good. And then and then we ran into a sort of phone call prestations with another distillery somebody else who had the exact same idea that I did a couple of years before me. Or I'm not sure when the idea happened, but they got to work before and I'm sure you guys have heard of them. That's Kohana.

Will Hoekenga 30:12

Yes, yeah, we've been with him. And we're like, going,

Steve Jefferson 30:15

that's amazing. Like, no. And then so we started, you know, sort of doing this together and separately, and then and then it got to be good enough that people started to get interested. And then we we put out a pitch deck. And in my pitch deck, I said, we're going to do for rom what high West did for whiskey because we were really impressed with high West, this about 2015. And, and high West just revolutionized whiskey. And they had this cool lending program, and they're just making it you know, this coveted stuff. And, and David Perkins, who's the CEO, somebody gave him the pitch deck.

Will Hoekenga 30:48

And you're, you're thinking like, Oops, I didn't want him to see this. Yeah. And

Steve Jefferson 30:53

then he comes to Hawaii. He comes to Hawaii to see what we're all about. And you know, I joke because it's not really like this, but it kind of felt like you know, you're singing a Bruno Mars song in the shower. And you and you open up the shower curtain and Bruno Mars, hands up towel, you're like,

Will Hoekenga 31:10

Get out of my bathroom, man. Yeah,

John Gulla 31:12

it feels like something Bruno Mars would actually do a

Steve Jefferson 31:15

video, that'd be the next video. He can pull that off and make it so anyway, so he comes out any any any sort of scrutinizes what we're doing, and he signs up. And and so he invested, he brought a bunch of high West investors, he brought a lot of his knowledge, he bought his blending expertise. So we're off to the races. Now, you know, over the years, we've raised close to $15 million. Wow, didn't really start engine campaign. Now we can talk about like, why that versus the way we've done it in the past, which is really interesting. I think a lot of entrepreneurs should be aware of the differences because it's cool. And so we raised the money and build the distillery by this farm, and as kind of cool story on how we get the farm. And and and so you know, right place, right time, lots of hard work, lots of luck. So they all go hand in hand. And then and so, you know, today we're at this point where we're really you know, we got this incredible story. And we've been working really hard to make our product good. It took us six years before we sold our first ball.

Will Hoekenga 32:13

I was going to ask you, you have the company rum bottle, I was going to ask, is there still rum in that bottle? And if so that's full, how does it? How does it taste in comparison to what you're making? Now?

Steve Jefferson 32:26

You know, if you open it, it's gonna start oxidizing. So I kind of don't want to open that's true. Yeah, in my mind, it's beautiful. It's but to be honest, like if somebody else tried it, they'd be going like, yeah, I could see, hey, you're just getting started. It's like, don't read your Old poetry, or I'm going to keep it sealed and pretend like it was the most beautiful grommets ever been made? And yeah, but I will say, I mean, now I'm really proud of what the guys are doing now as they actually are making, you know, the most beautiful room ever made. I mean, it's it's leaps and bounds better than anything I could ever do. And so it's yeah, so that's, that's what we're working on is product quality. And, you know, we've, I brag silently to you guys. I'm a little bit more, you know, shy and public about bragging it, but we've been we've had some really good recognition that I'm super proud of. And I'm excited because rum Agricole, I had to sail to Martinique, with my family. And I'm in I'm almost 40 years old at the time to discover rum agricole for the first time and I'm a foodie. Like, how could I not known that rum could be this good? You know, in the 2000s, on heard of it, like, What is this stuff, and it seems crazy to me that this stuff was like, just not part of the American vernacular not available anywhere?

Will Hoekenga 33:41

Well, you know, and that alone is as prevalent as it is in rum enthusiast circles, and even, you know, perhaps cocktail enthusiast circles and stuff like that. It's still cane juice rum is still relatively unknown to you know, the average, you know, spirits consumer in the US. So, there's still so much discovery to be done. But that's what that's what's exciting to me about, like, all these other, you know, kind of takes on the category that we're seeing from places all over the world, from cane growing regions of the US to Mexico to you know, Asia Pacific region, to Africa. Like there's there's cane juice rums coming from everywhere around the world. And so it's I think it's a really exciting chance for many more people to be introduced to that category. And it's also cool when you can be introduced to it and it comes from somewhere close to you, or if you're somewhere visiting Hawaii, and you can try rum and they can tell you this came from a plant that was in the ground, you know, that we harvested and you know, most people don't even really know how sugar cane works as a plant that you can like crush it and get this juice and all that stuff. So it's really exciting. What's

Steve Jefferson 34:52

cool about rum is that and we had to backwards engineer this. We're trying to figure out how to format this fresh juice. Yeah, and So what we did is we started looking at what everybody else was doing. And we created these tables, like what bricks is their liquid at what, what temperature? Is it at what pH is? Is it, you know, what the, what's the level of turbidity? So we created all these charts to try and figure out what do we need to do to our juice to get it to ferment properly. And then every single category that the juice was perfectly spot on right in the middle, it couldn't have couldn't have tweaked any better to good for us. So I'm like, Boy, what a coincidence. How lucky do we get right?

John Gulla 35:29

Yeah, all the stars just aligned for you here, all the different things. That's great.

Steve Jefferson 35:33

And then we started looking into yeast going, okay, which yeast should we use? And then I realize all these EES are actually called Cerebus, Saccharomyces service, a SSCC. And I'm thinking that sounds like saccharin sounds like so I looked it up. And I mean, it's a little sugar cane critter in Greek. And I realize, wait a second, everybody else is actually taking their agricultural product, and turning it into sugar cane juice. As where we, you know, we took different types of sugar, molasses, water, pH, dit, and we are creating sugar cane juice in the beginning, now that we have our fresh sugar cane juice, I realized that everybody else is making sure trying to approximate sugar cane juice from their agricultural product, because that's what the yeast wants. So then I realized, Oh, we've got the prime fermenting liquid that yeast is looking for. Our job is to not screw it up. Right, right, right. And so a difficult part for us. So that sounds really easy. But it turns out the difficult part is because we don't heat it. And we don't process it at all. It's the wild wild west for all microbes. And so to get your yeast to win in that fermentation takes a little bit of finessing, and that that took us a few years to really figure out, especially

Will Hoekenga 36:43

when you factor in like, you know, generally you're not going to ferment and is still right where you juice the cane necessarily, if you're using the field. Turns out Yeah. Oh, okay. I didn't then

Steve Jefferson 36:55

your farm and then take it over to the distillery. Oh, wow. Yeah. So once alcohol is made, it needs to be in a place where it can be taxed properly. Oh, it goes back to taxes. Yeah, of course. That's why they're called revenue officers. Yeah.

John Gulla 37:10

So Steve, you mentioned the rum company, as it was called Long ago, but you obviously you settled on the name kuleana rum works. I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about that. Because I know kuleana has a specific meaning that is important to you. But I also want to ask the specific intention behind the word works in the title as well. So if you can talk about both of those, yeah. Oh,

Steve Jefferson 37:30

can I run grab another prop?

Will Hoekenga 37:32

Yeah, we love the props. Keep the props come in. All right. So what's the model?

Steve Jefferson 37:38

So here's our bottle. And this is the inspiration. So in Hawaii for 100, a couple 100 years, there was the sugarcane companies, and everybody walked. So within a mile or two, there'd be towns. And then every two miles there'd be another town because that's about as far as people walk. Right. And then in the middle of town, there'll be some somebody selling local soda. And when I say local, I mean, I'm talking like hyper local, like Kona soda works, or laupahoehoe. Is soda works, or new E soda works. I mean, it's like, hyper local. And, and so for example, this one's called Pacific soda works. And CDM Smith, and then this one's called Kona Bottling Works. Wow. And then they would say Kona, Hawaii. And so that's why we're actually kuleana rum works.

Will Hoekenga 38:32

The inspiration came from the soda bottles.

Steve Jefferson 38:35

Yeah. So it's basically a blown up version of this bottle. So this is really cool. It's in the same font. And then and then we call it we added works, because it implies as though this is generational knowledge. distilling was this really big thing when we were getting started, and I didn't want to, let's be honest, craft means there's like some passionate people. But it doesn't mean it's good. Yeah. Right. It doesn't know what it really means. Yeah. And so So I realized, you know, when you're going from 200 distilleries, to 2000 distilleries, there's gonna be some Shakedown. So I wanted to really differentiate ourselves with the name so people understood, like we're actually trying to say that we're going after quality. And I think that's what work says, and work sort of reaches way back. And I kind of wanted to bring it back into the future. And so I mean, yeah, so just, you know, pulling this thing similarly, that's kind of what we're trying to do with the sugar canes. So the sugar cane is this incredible story of people discovered this plant. Oh, life needs sugar to live period. It's the central energy source sugar cane plants do it better than anybody else. These Pacific Islanders discovered a 10,000 years ago, they've been cultivating into a plant and spreading it around as part of their culture. It stopped during sugarcane days because they weren't efficient plants or they wanted you know, something that that stat veteran trucks or didn't rot in the field or whatever, right? These plants were forgotten. We want to take these So bring them into the future. We're like, no, please do not stop the development of this. Yeah, these are just plants. Let's keep this going right and nobody can own it. You can't patent it. You can't? Well, somebody might try. But hopefully nobody does. We don't want somebody like taking this plant and our plant from now on, and now you have to pay us licensing fees. We want this to go forward. So that's kind of like, that's kind of like what work says to me. And the bigger thing that we're getting to is that's really kind of what kuleana means to to answer your question, John, so So if you look in a dictionary, kuleana will say responsibility, but that's only part of it. kuleana is, it's the rights and the privileges that you're awarded, if you're willing to be responsible for something. And the amount of rights and privileges you get are directly reciprocal to how well you're managing that resource that you've been given the responsibility for.

John Gulla 40:52

Man, I tell my kids that all the time. Exactly. So

Steve Jefferson 40:55

it's something that we all know, right? And people have told us, right, you can't have your meat if you don't eat. You're good.

John Gulla 41:00

That's right. How can you have a training if you don't need to meet

Steve Jefferson 41:05

me because in America puddings, a dessert and I'm like soul. I now know that putting as it is anything in English, but Right. It's the same thing. And it's why beer tastes so good after you mow the lawn. Like if you're drinking beer at 10am on the couch, it's not at all the same as a 2pm. After you've crushed the lawn, that's right. Yeah. So that's kuleana, right? That's like, Okay, now you can enjoy the rights and the privileges. And life is just better that way. And, and so that's kind of such an amazing value. That's, that's, that's very prevalent, especially on the Big Island. But it seems like it can be lacking in areas where people are frustrated or feel conflict or loss, I find that there's a lack of kuleana there, there's a lack of people realizing you know what, we just owe it to each other. This is the stuff, let's do the best job we can with it, let's share it. And when you start doing that, you know, so that's what I want to do. And if we can have a spirits company, and so we're additive free, right? No colors, no flavors, no sugars, we're super full disclosure, we put everything that we do, all of our rums is on the bottle, we want everybody to know what ABV we just want everybody to know everything. And because knowledge is power, and and, and if we can show that you can make better products by doing that. And you can create more value for your company. By doing that, then there's no reason to do trickery, there's no reason to pick a cheap syrup to make your near vodka taste good. There's no reason to, to pick, you know, cultures to represent your brand that probably aren't, you know, I mean, no offense, but pirates probably isn't the best. You know, it's fun and all, but I don't know, you know, I think there's a lot of people that might have trouble with pirates, especially the, you know, the people that so. So that's what we're trying to do. And that's, that's where kuleana comes in. And, and, and but it does hold us to a level of accountability. Where, where people can, you know, see, okay, you know, you need to follow up on this. And

John Gulla 43:15

it's nice to hear that, you know, it sounds like it's something that you are truly living, this is not just an ideal that you're just kind of putting out there. It sounds like you're you're upholding your end when you talked about Kohana earlier, even before you mentioned what kuleana means. My first reaction was like not a lot of people are going to react the way that you reacted to find out somebody had the exact same idea in this exact same space you did and was like had a two year Headstart. Yeah. But the way you were describing that and saying, Hey, cool, we can, you know, learn from each other and do this and be successful. Is it to me sounds like what you're espousing the idea of kuleana. And living that through?

Steve Jefferson 43:50

Yeah, because we all want rum to be better. And if and if somebody else is willing to go in and spend a few million dollars trying to make world class product dense. That's, that's validation for all of us. We're like, Yeah, that's what we need. You make a beautiful product, right? And they're helping grow the same sugarcane. So that's, it's awesome. So more of that, right. Yeah, actually,

Will Hoekenga 44:09

I want to circle back to that in a second. But first, I want to take a complete detour, because my mind is still stuck on the soda companies that you were talking about earlier. In this may be completely not the reason but was part of the reason why there were so many local soda companies was it because it cost so much more to bring mass market soda, you know, products that are available in other parts of the world to the island in those days. Yeah, you ready

Steve Jefferson 44:34

for mind? Blown? Yes, yes. And this is a great segue to rum. There were no shipping containers. Oh, wow. Yeah. And guess what shipping containers were? I have no idea. Oh, yeah, of course. So shipping containers were oak barrels. So when people step back and forth from here to there, they put it in an oak barrel You know, your iPhones your blue jeans, everything's put in oak barrels and sent around because that's what two meals and a man can handle.

John Gulla 45:07

Don't give Apple any ideas. No follow through with that.

Steve Jefferson 45:10

So and the segue to rum is is so so so when when the sugar industry in the Caribbean molasses was a byproduct of the sugar industry? Yeah, hell, some of the Moors This is Steve facts and tell some of the Moors were given molasses and saying, Okay, eat this stuff, you know, and feed it to your hogs. We'll see you tomorrow. 6am They're like, bro, do you have any idea what we got here? And they're like making a beer. And they're like, they're Moors. They invented distillation, to check this out. And they started making Rome, right? Guaranteed. That's how it happened. Right? You're you're you're in a hut, the plantation owner gives you some molasses, says whatever. You're making rum overnight, right? And so I That's my guess, and then on Barbados. So that's probably how it got started. And, and overnight, the rum industry instead of molasses. Being a byproduct of the sugar industry, sugar became a byproduct of the rum industry. Yeah, and everybody was all about the rum. So then now they're sticking this rum. And believe it or not, I'm actually gonna get back to the store, putting the rum in the barrels, because that's how you get it back to the Netherlands. That's how you get it back to England. That's how you get back to France and all these, you know, these colonizing countries that have this stuff, they're like, give it back. And the stuff was amazing. I don't know why it is way better now. But more of this, please. And that's really how barrel aging actually got started. And so that's, that's yeah, that's a really cool story. But to answer your question, like no, nobody was sending us anything, you know. So in fact, these bottles are owned, I think this one and this one actually says Property of Wow. Going up Bottling Works. So so they made the glass not putting Corona Bottling Works in boss because they're working on their brand. Yeah, they're saying this is my damn bottle like proof, right? Bring it back. Because people would sense if you bring it back. Right. And so it well, they wouldn't. Yeah, you'd have to bring it back because they owned it. And then that's where your soda came from. Gotcha. But actually refill it with these bottles. So that was right, on their

John Gulla 47:12

part. And that's when we think of milk that way before you know, the milkman came and yeah,

Steve Jefferson 47:17

you don't put your mojo guy you don't get any more milk, right? Yeah, I

Will Hoekenga 47:21

asked about the soda thing. It's so funny because the previous interview that we published before this one was with Isla rum company, which is a run distillery on Isla in Scotland and their distillery is inside a an old soda factory that had been closed for several decades and been Engels, their distiller was telling me, you know, the soda used to be really popular here. But then, you know, once they started actually bringing in soda from out that you know, it kind of, they had to find other stuff to do. So there's just so like, islands have these kinds of connections when you talk to people, even in different parts of the world, just kind of like the economics of them the way that function. It's so interesting. Yeah. That's

Steve Jefferson 48:04

why this is our logo. Yeah, Island mentality. There's this there's this phrase in Hawaiian it's Eva a moku. Hey, moku Hey, ba which means vase is a voyaging canoe. voyaging canoe is your island is the first part of that phrase, which means there's only room for so many people and everybody's job is crucially important on a waiting canoe. If you don't do your job. It's not my job isn't more important to you. If you're the water baler and I'm the Navigator. Your job is just as important. If you don't be able to water we're all gonna die. If you don't catch fish, we're all gonna die. So that's sort of this reminder, you got to take care of your business because it's crucial for everybody. So that's the first part and second part of your island is your canoe. Hey, hey, moku Hey, Vaughn. So once you get there, don't pretend like you have unlimited resources. Don't pretend like it doesn't matter anymore. Don't pretend like your kuleana isn't something you need to follow up on. And and so islanders all think this way, because we all realize that that you guys aren't going to be sending us bottles. So we got to make around right? You're not gonna send soda. So we got to make

John Gulla 49:09

that pretty quick. Yeah.

Steve Jefferson 49:10

So I think all islanders do that.

Will Hoekenga 49:14

Yeah, getting back to rum I do. One of the things I want to talk about is your approach to blending because you mentioned high West earlier and how part of what they made their name on was doing these really interesting blends and whiskey bringing different styles together and that sort of thing. And that may be an oversimplified simplification on my part of what they do, but I know that was at least one part of what they're doing. But since I don't know if it's since day one, but as far as your lineup right now, you guys have always put out rum that you distill that's 100% your rum. But then you've also put out several different blends. I know you have a blend of UNAIDS drums that features your ROM and also features a rum agricole from Martinique and a ROM from New Guinea I believe, and then you have an aid just blend that features, you know, rums from all over the world. And so I kind of like I know that can be that releasing source blends can be sort of an economic outlet for young distilleries. But it seems and this is just me from the outside looking in, it seems like a bigger part of your philosophy than just like, we just want to do this. So we can make some money while we wait for our stuff to age. And so I just kind of wanted to ask about, you know, how how, what is your philosophy when it comes to funding? Why, like, why do you want to bottle source stuff in addition to doing your own distillation, as opposed to just focusing on that?

Steve Jefferson 50:38

That's a great question. And you kind of nailed it. So ultimately, I think I genuinely believe I've been a bunch of whiskey just been a bunch of other distilleries. Often what will happen on the tour is they'll say, Oh, check out our fermentation tank. Stick your finger in it, give it a shot. Oh, don't worry, it doesn't taste very good. But it will soon because we're going to do this next, and everyone kind of giggles that they're even allowed to stick their hands in this thing that's going to become whiskey or whatever. And then you go to the still and they say, oh, yeah, this stuff's called white dog, you know, comes out at, you know, 85 proof or whatever, and or 85 ABB, you can try some if you want to try this. It's

Will Hoekenga 51:16

horrible. Yeah.

Steve Jefferson 51:19

But it's gonna be good in four years. And it is, I mean, it's amazing. But it always struck me as weird that, that, like, why would you be okay with your product, not being delicious, you know, and so I always thought about that. And, and, and then when we started, you know, making rum Agricole, and you try the sugar cane, it blows your mind, like, this stuff is amazing. Like, you just want to sit there and chew on the stuff. And then when when we get the juice, we're like drinking the juice, the juice is, is awesome. And then so for our fermentation process, we hired the the head brewer of Kona Brewing, because they make world class beer, we're like, take this delicious juice and make a world class fermentation with it. And so he does that. And then we distill that. So the point is, is we want it to be delicious throughout. So then because it's delicious throughout, then I'm thinking that and I really liked, for example, tequila, and I love what I love about tequila is that it can be very straightforward. Not on the additive front, but on the H front. Blonko so an AST, and yeah, it's been arrested, right? Extra nail. It's really frickin old. Cool, right? And it's very clear to everybody what the colors mean and what you can expect, you know, try one rep is auto versus another and it's basically so I love that straightforwardness. And then but but they're all tequila ish. And so you can only do so much what I realized with Rama is there's you can make every single cocktail you've ever had with rum. And if you have, if you're if you do it right, the cocktail will if certain if not be as good or better. It will certainly be more interesting. So for example, we make rum Negroni set the rum check, we make different kinds of rum Negronis. And they're like rum Negroni. I didn't know you could do that. You can do that if you don't, but the colors, flavors sugars. So to answer your question, what are the rums that we're going to come out with them? So we got this beautiful rum agricole. We can make this business based on our agricole and an ace agriculture. But we want more because we want rum to be better and I realized how wrong could be so then we're like, okay, we want for rum. So we want a cocktail rum. We want a white rum. That's it's superior for cocktails, right? We want it. Mojito stackers? Absolutely. But what about Nick bronies? What about even like a martini? Yeah, you're just like wait what? And so that's what who he who he is. So who he who he is, we start with a very light round most rounds are made at 94 ABV because at 95 You have to call it a Bach or GNS they go right to the limit strip out most of the flavors and then often they'll add colors, flavors, sugars, and, and or not. And then so what we do is we start with this beautiful like rom originally that we got from Papa New Guinea, which is cool, because that's where sugarcane started on Earth to something like that. And then it has beautiful RAM that nobody else in the US gets. And then and then we add it and so I think of this is how the French do it. They I took a cognac distillation class from Hugh bear Rabin, who's the current American cognac genius from France. And he taught me how they blend and so so basically you think of base body accent. So my analogy is bases like your skeleton. Are you tall? Are you wide? Are you short? Are you thin? Body is is like your muscles, right? Is it gonna be super top heavy? Is it going to be bottom heavy? Is it going to be spitting fat round bottom? Is it going to be you know, just this really sort of super strong embracing thing? Yeah. And then the third stage is accent so that would be like your clothes or your jewelry or your perfume or whatever.

Will Hoekenga 54:56

I was thinking face but I see the direction of going into You're

Steve Jefferson 55:00

going to be flamboyant right? Are you gonna? Yes, it is a party up front or rear, right? These are all options. And that's, that's what you do with the accent. So I think about those three things separate. And then so when we're going, Okay, we want this beautiful cocktail rum. Why don't we start with obviously start with this light rum because we're trying to make a cocktail rum. That's not too much of anything. So start with a light rum flexible. Yeah, but instead of doing syrup's to give a flavor, let's use our rum agricole. And that was actually one of our we're sitting here blending different rums together, not without out a year, and one of our founding partners, my my partner, Charlie, Senator, he's like, why aren't we using our own agriculture flavor this? And I'm like, that's the best idea on the planet Earth. Right? Like, why didn't we think of that? And I think it's because, you know, if your Ferrari you would never stick your engine in a Toyota, right? Like, why would I put my v 12? In a Toyota? That's a Ferrari mentality, right? If you're making an Agricole, that's how you think of it, but there's way more Toyota owners out there, like if I have a turn and somebody offers me a Ferrari V 12. I will take that yes, please, and put that in there. So that's kind of where Charlie got to. So then so we're flavoring now this this rum with our agricole. And then we thought, oh, for the accent. Let's get a agricole from Martinique. So Martinique has these sort of a little bit grass here, but they have this really cool peppery flavors to them that I just love. And so a little teeny bit of Martinique Agricole, to give it that real clean sign off, like this lemon zest, pepper, sign up, just move. And it's beautiful for cocktails. So well, you know, high fives all around. And now same thing, how the problem that we're trying to solve is how do you get people a properly a drum that's not gold from caramel coloring, but it's actually age that you can sell for less than $1 An ounce to a cocktail program, and totally represents the beauty of what an ATM can be and converts whiskey drinkers, right? Oh, I hate I hate rum. Give me an old fashioned. Here's, you know, we do this to the rum shot. We give them these old fashions made with none. And they're just like, I love this. What was more like it was wrong. They're like, ah, you know, I'm kidding. But so that's five different rooms, from different places around the world, including, and this is the you know, and we tell you what rooms we put in there, but we put our age rum agricole in there. So we take our rum Agricole, we aged for 18 months and cognac barrels, and we use that as the body rum in all of our plants. Because we know you can recreate it, but you're not making our rum so you can't use it similarly. And then the last one is the Hokulea. We wanted a big sipper, we convert your stag or your pappy or your extra in da ho people, how do you show them that rum can be as good or better, that's what hopefully is jobs. And you

John Gulla 57:42

can pay $1,000 for it. Yeah, now.

Steve Jefferson 57:47

I gotta brag a little bit, but hopefully it was named the world's top age run by Forbes, at over three years. So that's cool. So doesn't cost

John Gulla 57:55

$1,000. And

Will Hoekenga 57:58

it's, by the way, the, you know, you've mentioned several accolades, but the one that I find most impressive is that you got Jeff berry to give a testimonial on the website about your own age drum. So that was pretty cool. How'd you get that?

Steve Jefferson 58:13

So are one of our founding partners aren't deacons, he's the one who created the whole bar program, we decided we're gonna go large and also open a bar and restaurant at the same time because it's for punishment, like we got to farm we got a distillery we're blending and now we're going to have a bar and restaurant and we're going to open them all at the same time. So our deacons came over because he's this master mixologist, he won the World Meitei contest in 2016. And, and he's friends with with Jeff and and invited me over and he loved it and I'm all like you really love it and you just really love it because you're kind of the man and I've been a jungle bird fan forever two sides just like you know. Yeah, it's bowing it is altered but yeah, so I we were tickled that that that he was willing to write such a nice oh,

Will Hoekenga 59:03

he's he's given out for free beyond that. I mean, last time we talked to him on the podcast he brought you guys up of I think we were talking about stuff that surprised him. And he was talking about really good roms from like places you don't traditionally associate with ROM and he shouted you guys out. But one other thing. By the way, I

Steve Jefferson 59:23

was like, Can I cut this out and see?

Will Hoekenga 59:26

Yeah, feel free, feel free. One thing I wanted to bring up real quickly, because we actually we had to bring up the same thing with Kyle from Kohana. And I know we have listeners right now because our listeners are like, the most hardcore of hardcore rom fans. I know. We have some who have been saying to themselves, Steve, why do you keep calling it agricole when agricole can only be made in the French islands so I just like what yeah, what's what is your approach there? Because I know the inspiration came from Martinique. I know when you guys were developing your recipe you got Oh, what is his name? I wrote down his Name Jill's Jill's coding. Yeah, yeah. He spent 30 years as distiller Avani. So yeah, talk us through your, your philosophy there.

Steve Jefferson 1:00:10

There's a ton of confusion with Ron, there's this. There's this one, there's this one rule and rum that says you're allowed to add two and a half percent colors, flavors and sugars. And you can do it without disclosure as long as it's normal business practice. Yeah, which we could all collude and decide whatever was okay. And we could all do it. So because of that, there's all these different things about rum that's very confusing. And to me so as an outsider, full total outsider to this industry, like the day we decided we're gonna start a rum company that morning that we woke up we had zero intention of ever having anything to do with alcohol other than than drinking it at bars or at home, honestly, and so I so as from an outsider, I get it. And so I'm trying to like break this apart and reduce confusion, reduce the noise. So you'll see like on the back of our bottles, we have these graphs, and we say what ABV was a distilled dead. What barrel was at age that was we

Will Hoekenga 1:01:07

loved we loved the details. We love it. Yeah. What

Steve Jefferson 1:01:09

was the source for the fermentation like these things matter, regardless of what the Spirit is? So So similarly, rum Agricole, the French like, you got it, you gotta love the French, like, people have been making beautiful rums. And the French are like, check this out, we're gonna make it with all the Jews were like, totally cheating. Like, how come? We didn't think of that? And they make this thing that everyone's like, wow. Right. And so that was my reaction. So it's like, you gotta you gotta give them credit for it. Right? You got to give them credit. And I understand that the AOC. If we were in France, we wouldn't be allowed to do it. But we're just trying to acknowledge like, this is your category that you made up, we're trying to follow your rules as much as we can, you know, there's certain things we can do. Like, obviously, we use our sugar canes instead of their hips, because we think our tastes better. And we use this type of steel that we have, because we think it makes a better agricole. And we do certain things because we think they're better tweaks on it. But but we want people to start at a place that's known. And we want to do it with as much authenticity. So you could say, okay, I can see where you're calling it, agricole. Legally, it's not but but you're definitely not breaking any of the real tenants of what agriculture should be. So for example, yesterday at the run check two days ago at the Rum shack, I was in there. And this French guy comes up to me, and I'm like, Oh, right. So so I'm from, you know, the heavy French accent. He's from France. And I love agricole. And I heard you guys had agriculture. I tried some in the store. And I was like, and he's like, I love it. So I came in today to try it and as many cocktails as he can, he's, I can't believe that there's an agricole that's not from Martinique, that tastes good. And so, so that's, you know, you know, that's, in all honesty, that's like, that's why we do it. And we didn't want to come up with a new name. And kudos to Kohana because they actually started using it before us. They call theirs Hawaiian agricole rum. And so, you know, we talked about that be years before we launched, we both talked about using the word Agricole, what it meant. And the thing that I'll speak only for myself, the thing that I really liked was hangar one, the guy that did rum and San Francisco. I can't think of the same after hangar one. He came out that really cool spirits brands, St. George. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. All I need is a rum expert on St. George's, I think is the one that got TTB to allow the word agricole to be used.

Will Hoekenga 1:03:31

I think they were the first Yeah. So the TTB didn't even like they just saw it and probably didn't even know what it was. And we're like,

Steve Jefferson 1:03:40

TTB, definitely scrutinized this thing. So by them not waving it past means that you've gotten the Okay, so I believe, my understanding is they did a bunch of work to allow that to be used. So I just want to really want to hop on a known way of representing what we do, and reduce confusion. So

John Gulla 1:04:02

let's, let's talk about the sugar cane a little bit, actually. So you mentioned it, you showed us the beautiful picture earlier, of the red, you know, colored cane, and we mentioned you've talked to wheeling the past I know, but 35 Different varieties plus, so I was curious to know your your 10 years in pretty much now because I know the company started back in 2013. Roughly, are you still committed right now to growing all of these 35 Plus varieties? Or have you started to narrow it down some overtime? Because you found where you want to kind of start leaning towards? Or How has that worked itself out? Well,

Steve Jefferson 1:04:37

yeah, well, can you see my Can you see the camera? Yeah, that's beautiful. That's 11 of the 35 sugar canes that we grow. And one day when we were juicing, I just had these on the ground. And so I just lined them up, took a picture with my iPhone. So to answer your question, what we found is for the wine rum agricole that we make, we use about three different varieties for that And those are the ones that overtime because in the beginning you know, when you're not that good at distilling the difference between distillation batches might not be the cane variety, it might be any number of very go into it. So it took us a long time before we could actually say that this one tastes better because of this variety.

John Gulla 1:05:16

Rome algebra, you isolate the variable, right, exactly that

Steve Jefferson 1:05:21

way we could use you eight years ago. That's totally not how we did it. So anyway, so so so there is a couple that really, really, really just performed super well and give us what we need. So we are definitely narrowing down the vast majority of what we grew up because of that, however, simultaneously, we are also dedicating areas to ensure that we have as many known varieties as there are and continue to have them. And we definitely want to do something similar to what Kohana is doing and come out with a single varietals program, you know, and but they're doing a great job with it now. So we're not trying to you know, we would just do it if we did it like at the Rum shack only just so somebody could try it, you know, right, like a limited offering. Yeah, just

Will Hoekenga 1:06:07

so people and like, I won't say everyone but most cane juice, rum producers are doing some kind of single varietals bottles now at this Yeah, like, I know, that's kind of cool. Honda's whole philosophy is single parietal, but it's a feature of many different kgs producers. So yeah, technically

Steve Jefferson 1:06:26

we are to, but because every single batch is always one dried, we cut one row, we cut one row, sometimes a row and a half to make a batch. And it's always the same variety. And but we're sort of reserving the right to, there may be a different variety in there. If we blend three or four of these batches together in order to sort of get to this normalcy. So we'll have a weekly tasting, where we rate six different things. Everybody goes, whether you're plus or minus on each one of those six things. So for example, it's interesting. One of them is if I see if I can remember him in order grassiness is one of them. funkiness is one of them, because those are the first few things people think of when they think of rum Agricole, to be honest, we like ours to be down. We don't want it to be grassy and funky, because what we're going for this the next to floral, and fruity. Yeah, so so we've got sliders for those, right. And we like to have high floral, high fruit in ours, we have one that sweetness, we have one that I call it a servic. I can't remember what what word we use, you know, to give you that sort of that mouthfeel that may be good may be bad. And so we've got these six things, everybody tastes it, and we normalize it and we get it. And then and then it's the distillers job to actually when when we're doing a batch Agricola to make sure that those you know that they hit the the flatline standard that we're always right. Because Agricola has enough variation is that you don't want people to go Yeah, you know, I just don't I can't trust that this is going to be as good as the last time I had it.

Will Hoekenga 1:07:58

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John Gulla 1:08:00

I love that idea. By the way of kind of just simplifying, it's like, no, we don't need a one through 10 scale or a five star system here. It's plus or minus maybe, yes, get it right. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Right, right.

Will Hoekenga 1:08:10

I do want to talk a little bit about production process. People always like to kind of hear the nuances of that. But one thing that was news to meet you gave us a quick little tour of the distillery before we started doing the interview, and you guys have had a new steal for about a year and a half. And the last one the last time I had seen it, it was like the kind of old school looking almost kind of like cognac looking, you know, cover? Yeah, potstill. The new one is, is you know, the more modern looking kind of pot column hybrid is what it looked like. But so how are you guys running? You're still you know, what does fermentation look like? Give us like a quick little overview.

Steve Jefferson 1:08:49

So the whole point of this scale is it's four times bigger than the first one. Yeah, much bigger. I

Will Hoekenga 1:08:53

was struck. The last time we talked, I saw that still. And I was like, That's so much smaller than I would have thought.

Steve Jefferson 1:08:59

Yeah, yeah. And so So number one is four times bigger. Number two is that we fire it with steam instead of direct. Yes, safer. Yeah. So those are our top two priorities. Number three was, we needed the same flavor profile we developed with our copper lambic still. And so we sourced a bunch of different people and we picked these guys from Canada called revival still works. They were just getting going but they sort of broken away from other distillery. I'm still making companies. tons of experience super good guys. I'm not saying you should buy their steel, but you should definitely talk talk to those guys when you're making a steel because we're really impressed. And basically, we told them what we needed. So we were very clear on what our distillation curve looks like. You know, what ABV we wanted to come out. You know, when we want to see the head start to come out what what range we expect the hearts to be. And so we talked to him about this on the phone and not only did they not get it but they basically delivered a steal that could do that. And so we do have five plates on our column but we run I'm wide open. Okay. And that was the goal, the goal was to not to have to use any of the plates. But we had five as an insurance policy just in case. And sure enough, we get a run at wide open it's exact same flavor profile that we wanted. And I'll be totally honest, it's slightly cleaner. And probably because it's more efficient. And what's really neat is that we're able to get another 10% Out of, of the potential alcohol that's in your fermentation. We actually net about 10%. More out as finished rum. Because the steel is just so much cleaner. Yeah. And so you get the you know, it's not as crude with the fatty acids at the end. So it's

John Gulla 1:10:43

especially right because I remember hearing that you all try for a lower ABV out of

Steve Jefferson 1:10:48

shockingly right, we started 70 ABV, which is already pretty low. Most galleries probably distilled between 80 and 94 ABV. So we're starting at 70, which is 30% flavor 70% ethanol. And when we finish our hearts run will be in the 50s. Yeah, and that's the hearts round. So it's almost one to one ethanol versus flavor that goes, you know, and then that means we have to prove less, but it better taste good. Because there's no hiding it. And, yeah, you're getting that much volume in the bottle. So that's the hard part. You know, it took us a while before we could actually do that.

Will Hoekenga 1:11:26

And fermentation wise, it's we're not getting like super long, multi week wild fermentation. This is more a little more controlled, right? But you guys are gonna, one of the cool things that Sheila's did

Steve Jefferson 1:11:37

is that as you as you as you reverted to is that that Martinique is their rum, agricoles and ALC. So they have to use this they have to use. So he's got this little black book is stuff. He's all like, you know, if it were up to me, I might try this. So we tried a couple of things, including the ease that we use. So now I can't tell you that now that I've said that, but it's amazing. And it was not intended at all for what we're doing. You're doing what you know.

Will Hoekenga 1:12:05

So this isn't just you know, rum, yeast x, or whatever, you know, the first thing that they send you when you say I want to make rum.

Steve Jefferson 1:12:14

Let's just say I don't think it'd be on anybody's talk. Okay, gotcha. And but the point is, is is is is a very controlled from everything we do is hyper controlled, which is why we hired beer guys. And the second person we hired that's in charge of our production now, was the QA guy from Kona Brewing.

Will Hoekenga 1:12:32

Oh, interesting. Okay, cool. So you

Steve Jefferson 1:12:35

need to be a master fermenter. And be you need to be hyper careful. So that's, that's our team. That's who runs the program for us. And that's, you know, why they get such awesome consistent results. So so so we ferment for about four days, we temperature control our ferment within a very tight degree. So we've we've got chillers working, and we monitor that very closely. So we get, we pretty much get exactly what we expect to get now at the end of every fermentation cycle. And then it takes about it takes about four to six hours to cut and juice the cane, we deliver the fresh juice to the distillery, the only thing and then yeah, and then we stick it in the fermentation tanks. And that's four days and then we just steal it in about eight to 12 hours. Gotcha.

Will Hoekenga 1:13:22

And I want to talk you mentioned the, you know, juicing the cane, the farm side of things. One of the interesting things to me about distilleries like yours is it's really like it's not just a distillery, right? There's two sides to this one is making rum. The other is growing the sugarcane and even though they they intersect to create this product that we love so much. They're completely different disciplines and like resources, like it's basically like operating two businesses kind of

Steve Jefferson 1:13:49

well, it's we're actually farmers, we're distillers and we're blenders. Yeah, yeah. And those three different things and Right, right, that's everything you can do in the spirits world. And many, many spirits brands actually don't do any of those things. Yeah, right. Still totally legit. I brought those products in love them. So the fact that we're doing three of them can get very comp and then we also ordered, you know, run up bar and restaurant, which is crazy. Yeah. Outside

Will Hoekenga 1:14:16

of it, too. Yeah.

John Gulla 1:14:17

That's to switch out. Yeah,

Will Hoekenga 1:14:19

yeah. I, we need to ask at some point, if there's a fifth or sixth that you're pondering what else what else you could throw in the mix? You can

Steve Jefferson 1:14:26

use it but but our whole intention is to be completely vertical. Like there's no way you can deliver what you want to deliver unless you own every single part of the process. Period. Yeah. Yeah. So from the way the soil is treated, to how the mind tie is served is is under our control. Yeah.

Will Hoekenga 1:14:47

On the note of the farm, I think it's about 45 acres as I described earlier, it's beautiful land overlooking the ocean that some of which you're using to grow cane. I think last time we spoke Look, you talked about you guys were working on a visitor's center out there so we can get an update on that, maybe. But how did you get the land in the first place? And how has kind of your approach to growing cane evolved over time? Because like I was saying, that's as much as we talk about making rum being a learning process, farming and learning how to do all that is an enormous process. And from talking to other producers who have gotten into it for the first time. For a lot of them, it's much more labor intensive, much more complex, much riskier than they were initially anticipating with all they can go wrong with it. So take us through the story of Yeah, Megan. Yeah. You

Steve Jefferson 1:15:40

guys remember Mr. T from the 80s? And I Oh, yeah. I pity the

Will Hoekenga 1:15:43

fool. The fool who doesn't remember Mr. T. Yeah, I

John Gulla 1:15:46

got to it before you did well,

Will Hoekenga 1:15:48

damn.

Steve Jefferson 1:15:48

I pity the fool that that has his own farm. It's like, it's really, really, really difficult. And so So I have this sort of philosophy that I think is sort of the Hawaii way. Which is why the Hawaii way works so well. Is the Hawaii always is multigenerational decision making process. So the decisions are typically made with what are like four ancestors from me gonna think of this decision that I made versus what can I get out of this this week? And so I boil that down to this thinking of this thing that I call easy choice hard life. Yeah, choice, easy life. So people in Hawaii are happy to do hard choice, an easy life, some people come over here, and they're like, oh, everybody's so laid back, everybody. So whatever. That's because they already did the hard choice, right? They've already decided we're gonna live in Hawaii, and we're not going to have this job, we're not going to compete with you, right? It's not important for us to have a BMW or it doesn't matter. Or we're gonna have multi generational family living on our count compound, because I don't have to worry about what my mom's doing when she has Alzheimer's or whatever, right. And so hard choices to make, but then Easy, easy life, because it's, you got it all figured out. So similarly, that's the approach we took without realizing it was just obvious when you're born and raised here, you would just do it that way. So when we started the rum company, it was just apparent to me that we needed to do everything. And it's not from a business standpoint, but from what we're trying to pull off it is. And so so having it be baked in from the beginning makes it a lot easier. Like I think it'd be very difficult to take a viable product. And then say, now we're going to grow or an inputs and still make it viable. How you do that, because it costs so much money to grow and to control and stuff like that. I mean, there's a reason why container trucks full of you know, malted barley show up with this beautiful product for us, because like, you don't want to be doing that. Did I answer your question?

Will Hoekenga 1:17:45

I also love just love to hear like how you guys, you know, settled on that site. Yeah, I

Steve Jefferson 1:17:51

knew we needed to grow these heirloom one sugar canes, and we knew that sugar canes weren't grown anywhere. Yeah, only grown in isolated spots. And these families that had been sort of cherishing these plants for generations that that Noah went and discovered and took cuttings of and DNA. And so he's the one that sort of found that these plants were even around. And so 35 of them had roughly the same DNA signature and he realized the story that we talked about, so he had a little collection as he was working on his PhD at a at a not an arboretum. What do you call those things? Were plants are I can

Will Hoekenga 1:18:23

I had the St. George answer. I don't I don't have the answer here. panicle garden Botanical Garden. Okay. Okay,

Steve Jefferson 1:18:29

so there's this botanical garden where these plants were so he let us take cuttings of them all. And so sometimes we only had one cutting and and that cutting could hopefully come up with one plant that does 25 stocks. So yeah, so So we had these cuttings in my yard and I didn't have I don't have a very big house. And we had 600 plants, pots in my yard and all the neighbors that can go in these freaking were like, what do you do sugar? Sugar canes done like sugar cane in your yard.

Will Hoekenga 1:18:59

This is a this is a first for the HOA right? Yes type of violation, my

Steve Jefferson 1:19:05

neighborhood doesn't have any. So so we have these pots of sugarcane, and we laid some land to grow the first batch of them. And then that's where we saw how the plants actually grew. And then that gave us enough cuttings to actually get on the next day. That's roughly you know, 100 to one propagation. So one little piece can net you at least 100 pieces in about two years. Well, so we're going through that cycle. And then meanwhile, we're doing the fundraise and all this other stuff that was talking about and identified this piece of land that I'm like, this is the spot right? This is classic hidden Hawaii and it was formerly sugarcane land. So as to the fact that I didn't want to take out land that could have been higher use agricultural land, or or housing or eat I didn't want to compete because you know, with something else, so it was farmer Sugar Cane Land, and now it's rent fallow. when it's used for cattle, so cool, so that's perfect. And then I looked at the maps and notice it was the sugarcane company had called that the prime a spa. So this, this had a double A rating. So this was one of their highest output. So I'm like, okay, soils is good. And then there was water, there was a ditch water there. So that was awesome, too. So I approached the landowner, I don't have any money, we don't have any, we haven't raised any. And I said, I'll give you 50 grand. And, and we negotiated a price for it. And I said, Okay, I'm gonna give you 50 grand, and in 12 months, I'll give you all the money, cash. And if I don't give you all the money, then you just take the 50 Grand

John Gulla 1:20:39

sentence, right? I think I saw that scene and there will be blood, right.

Steve Jefferson 1:20:45

But we actually, so we pulled it off, and we came up, we came up with the money and wrote him his check, and everybody's happy. We scored because we have 45 acres of land on the coast for I'll just say six figures. I mean, it was it was way Oh, really? Yeah. So we're super excited. And that and that's where it is. That's

Will Hoekenga 1:21:04

amazing. So how much of that now is being used for sugarcane? And do you anticipate a day where like, 100% of the land is all being used for sugarcane? Are you still planning visitors center? Like, what do you see as kind of the future of that that area?

Steve Jefferson 1:21:20

Yeah, by planning purposes, roughly half of it is set aside for sugarcane. It's almost split into like these two parcels, half of that. So roughly 20 acres and you know, but if you actually measure it enough, the CFO would say, it's probably 14 acres that actually planted. Okay. And then the remaining part we're planning on just keeping open so we have a permission to build another distillery and a instructional education center that includes a our second kuleana rum shack. Okay, that way people can come out and just get the whole experience. And then agricole program, if you will, so that it would be completely all on one parcel, all the agricoles. There, and then, and then

Will Hoekenga 1:22:09

your current, your current distillery could be more of focusing on the blending and stuff like that. That right being in

Steve Jefferson 1:22:15

warehousing, because, you know, from Yeah, went from 1800 square feet to I think we have, you know, I don't know, eight or 10,000 square feet now. I mean, it's yeah, it's a big, big building, it takes a lot of space to store bottles and things like that. So so how,

Will Hoekenga 1:22:28

like, you know, 10 years from now, or I don't know, two to five years, however, how much do you guys want to scale production of the rum you're distilling? How much more rum Do you want to be producing in the future? Do you like I don't know, the ratio of rum that you guys produce versus what you blend right now. But are you hoping that over time, you know, at a certain point, you're making more rum than you're blending? What does that look like?

Steve Jefferson 1:22:54

Yeah, good question. So it's yeah, it's obviously the amount of agricultural we sell relative to our hope, to everything that we sell is a is a is a percentage, right? It's a smaller percentage. And that's the point is that people can get the high value agricole in their everyday products. Well, not everyday, but we you know, like a premium. Well, you know, you can buy for 85 cents an ounce, like that's a smokin deal to get an actual unadulterated agricole based ROM is awesome. And so to one of the questions that what I hear your line of questioning going, so I'm going to suppose you're headed there is like, do we have enough land to scale? And what would that farm look like when we fully scaled the good news is that we don't, you don't need that much land to make tons of agricole. It's a pretty efficient plant. So even if we had 200 acres, that'd be more than probably we'd ever need. And that'd be like, you know, past 100,000 cases type volume. Wow, yeah. So, so that's, you know, we'd have a big business and our next door neighbor has 256 acres, and that's just one parcel. So there's 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of acres that are fallow on that coast because they all used to be sugarcane. So planting more is no problem and a big thing that we'd really like to do and we've started doing it is work with other farmers, right? To allow them to pick what what do you like what do you want to grow and we'll buy back from you and then that they could be farmers and then they could you know, hard choice and see live they made the hard choice to keep their land and not sell it? What are they gonna do with it? You know, people start complaining Well, we're not making any income. You know, we might be able to pay you say $10,000 An acre a year for the sugarcane you grow and we'll buy that you know, we'll buy that from you and and we're making room for the Hawaiian culture to grow right these these plants sort of represents preserving something Yeah, yeah. Let's let's make room for that and not as a commodity product, but as this highly valued plant. On

Will Hoekenga 1:24:58

the note of The, you know, cane varieties, all that stuff. One of the interesting things is, you know, you mentioned Kohana, they're doing their, their own thing over on Oahu, working with a lot of the same varietals. You guys are over on the Big Island, you know, I'm assuming very different type, you know, similar in some way, but very different type of field conditions, things like that. And that's kind of the there multiple pieces of terroir, when people talk about that, some places are very focused on the parcel of land, and what is the soil? Like? How close to the ocean? Is it? You know, what kind of water does it get that sort of thing? Then the other piece is the variety of cane being used, right? So an interesting thing is you guys are kind of like each doing similar things with different cane varietals, but in distinctly different environments. And I'm curious if you've had any conversations in terms of like, well, what is this varietal taste like? What is your soil like versus our soil? I don't know how much collaboration there is, you know, on that front, but are, you know, are you guys thinking about that in terms of even the diversity of land in your own area, if certain places taste different than others,

Steve Jefferson 1:26:04

so I will say, we do buy from time to time, sugarcane that other people have grown. And so we are aware of a wide variety that we are buying and be how it is relative to ours. Yeah. And so it's really interesting for us, and then sometimes what we'll do is, we'll grow the same variety on our land, and it will be different. And so who knows why yet because this is there's not enough data, it's not conclusive. It could be anyway. So fortunately, we know enough to know that we don't know anything, but it's very interesting what you're talking about. And it's an it's an it's definitely something we're paying attention to. And the more we can do it, then the more we get to learn, it's just fun knowing that there's this whole thing, this whole dataset that hasn't been created yet, and how cool, that'd be when we can get to the point where you're a region of Bergen, the limestone is six inches closer to the surface than it is on your neighbors. And it makes a difference in award winning Ryan and rubbish. You know, I mean, to get to that level, but you know, Yeah, who knows, you know,

Will Hoekenga 1:27:09

one step at a time. Yeah, exactly.

Steve Jefferson 1:27:10

But that's, that's the fun part. Like that's where I want to get to. So,

John Gulla 1:27:14

Steve, I wanted to ask, this is timely, because as we were doing a little bit of research for episode, I came across the crowdsource fundraising effort that is ongoing, actually, right now. Yeah. And noticed, it's very hard not to notice, you've already brought in over a million dollars through this fund. And it's still ongoing for, I believe, will if I'm right, by the time this is published, it'll still be ongoing for even a few days more on our schedule. So by the time people hear this, they may it may still be even active, then plan

Steve Jefferson 1:27:46

is to extend it, we're just we have to fill out. Okay, if we get the paperwork filed properly, because the year end is ended, so we were updating financials. Gotcha.

John Gulla 1:27:55

So I wanted to ask about it is why did you settle on that approach for raising money? What How did you even come to that? And then what is the intention behind what you're doing with that effort? Yes,

Steve Jefferson 1:28:06

that's a great question. I'm glad you asked that thing. So the vast majority of our money we've raised from a group of investors, one of which I told you about, and investors are awesome, because they're super smart. They know what's up. They can suss stuff out in seconds, right? It's like, it's like the Shark Tank, when you're walking down that that hallway, probably already know whether there's going to be a deal or not. Right? Yeah. And so similarly, I mean, there's a reason why these people are so successful is because they're really, really good at it. And they know what it takes, and they know what you do and don't know, and and they allow you to make those mistakes, anyway, and they'll bet on you whether they think you've got it or not. So we've got this wonderful group of investors that's like that. And because a lot of them will have houses, for example, in Hawaii, because it's so beautiful, especially on the island that we live in, and they want to see cool stuff happening. And so we've been you know, we've done more than $13 million that way. And the thought was though is start engine is super cool because it's it's an example of democracy democracy, sizing, democratizing democratize. I was a journalist and the editor. My head's like, bro, nope. fundraise, or investments? Yeah. And it's really cool, right? Because that's what computers have done, right? They they digitize information in a way that that any machine can transport it. So now we can make music the same way we can make, you know. And so investments are now opening up and the SEC has been pretty cool there where they allow these rules now to allow regular people to do investments. So what we're trying to do is D Are you guys familiar with the 1000 true fans thing that the music people do? Yeah.

Will Hoekenga 1:29:55

concept. So it's simply

Steve Jefferson 1:29:57

for anyone that hasn't heard of it is Er, if I got it wrong, this is how I'm thinking of it is if you want to be, if you want to go out there and just be a musician, get 1000 true fans, if you have 1000 true fans as defined by somebody that's willing to spend at least $100 a year on supporting you by buying your music, your tickets, your records got sponsored, then you can make 100 grand a year you got no excuses, go out there and be Roxor get your 1000 true fans and go do it. So that's what we're really trying to do. I firmly believe in that. I think, you know, there's nothing like the the true fans. And that's why that's what you guys, you guys cultivate the true fans, right? That's why everybody wants to be on your show this because you already have the 1000 true fans, right? You probably have like 80,000 true fans.