Kalki Moon Distilling and Brewing Company’s newest releases revealed

Amid a Covid-economy, a gin distillery in a city famous for its rum, is proving it has the perfect entrepreneurial tonic.

It might be the rum city but Bundaberg is fast becoming home to a leading gin joint.

Kalki Moon Distilling and Brewing has been operating in Bundaberg for nearly five years and in that time they’ve increased their staff, doubled their venue size and brought new products to the market.

Their most recent creation is a canned cocktail, their first premixed product: the Kalki Moon Gin Gin Mule.

In a 200ml can is a gin, ginger beer, lime and mint blend that’s ready to drink.

Kalki Moon’s Rick Prosser said it had been a three-year project “working in with the team at (Bundaberg) Brewed Drinks, with their canning line”.

“We’re very fortunate that they were able to do all the canning and packaging for us, with their product, their ginger beer and lime and mint, in the blend,” he said.

“It’s our product, it’s not a joint venture by any means, but they’ve been great to do that for us.”

The cans, launched two months ago on June 20, and the first run is nearly gone.

“We’ve done the second production run, it’s just coming out of quarantine at the moment,” he said.

Mr Prosser said the cans were a big volume product for the company, with forecasting suggesting they had the capacity to produce a million cans per year of the mule.

“We’re about to do the trail run on our next RTD [ready to drink] which is the pink gin – we’re doing pink gin with apple and raspberry,” he said.

“Same size, 200ml, 4.8%, it’s our pink gin blended over at Brewed Drinks – again they’re doing all the packaging with their apple and raspberry blended through it.”

He said the premixed product opened up a different demographic for the business: 18 to 27-year-olds who may not be interested in buying bottles of alcohol and mixing their drinks could now simply crack open a can to try it.

While they’ve made a name for themselves in the gin world, Mr Prosser said they have also started releasing some rum products.

“Plant Cane was the first one that we did in December. It’s an Australian cane spirit which is basically our white rum, and in Easter this year we launched our rum liqueur,” he said.

IN GOOD SPIRITS: Chloe Prosser with a bottle of the popular Kalki Moon Rum Liqueur.

“They were the first two rum products that we released.

“[We’re] always concentrating on making rum to age for that dark release later down the track – still no set time on when we’re going to release any dark rum, we’re just focused on good quality stuff and the gin business keeps up busy as well.”

The rum liqueur has been “very popular” since its release, with less than 16 cartons remaining of the first batch.

Mr Prosser said it was a 2000-bottle release and maybe 60-odd bottles left.

“I’ll have to do batch 2,” he said.

“It’s a product that’s a little bit limited at the moment because it is our aged rum out of the barrel, three-year-old old rum blended with chocolate and macadamia.”

For those looking to get one of the remaining bottles, Mr Prosser said your best bet is to visit the cellar door or one of the independent bottle shops around town because it hasn’t gone into the chain stores.

“We just don’t have enough volume at the moment to put it into the chains, which is nice, it kind of keeps it a bit of a local exclusive,” he said.

Mr Prosser said in the alcohol industry you could not sit idle for too long, you had to keep bringing new products out; like their pink gin and the premixed cans.

“This year’s solstice isn’t too far off being released, that’s our barrel-aged gin that we do once a year,” he said.

“We’re looking at rebranding in our classic range, going to a custom bottle, which will be nice …”

Mr Prosser said since Covid, around April and May last year, they were “lean” for 10–12 weeks with no cellar door, tastings or tours.

Bur since the Queensland restrictions were lifted they’ve been practically non-stop, with a “huge amount of sales out the door”.

He said other than about 10 days during the recent Brisbane lockdowns, sales had been “really good”.

Originally published as Kalki Moon Distilling and Brewing Company’s newest releases revealed