Dominic Galka at Lion Nathan
Dominic Galka landed a students’ dream job of working in a brewery for six months. He was selected for a PEPS placement at Lion Nathan’s XXXX brewery in Milton, however, he didn’t get close to the beer but instead worked on a project centred around Inner Circle rum.
Lion Nathan had recently acquired the Inner Circle Rum trademark and distillery, and needed to investigate the characteristic profile of Inner Circle rum.
Rum is a pot distilled alcohol, manufactured by the fermentation of a sugarcane by-product, molasses. In the laboratory at the Milton brewery, Dominic began distilling small quantities of the rum from the raw materials. He used gas chromatography to analyse the volatile compounds of the distillates, in order to establish a good rum profile that would mature into a high quality product.
Dominic found the work absorbing and great fun. He said the hardest thing was knowing where to start with the project. “At uni you are always told what the variables are, but here there were so many and I had to work out what to change and what to keep constant. That was a challenge.”
