Celsius Geothermal Rum

Thank you so much for looking at our new Crowdfunder page!

We’re building the world’s first geothermal rum distillery, in Cornwall, and we’d love to you jump on board and join us on our amazing journey building a project that will have a positive impact for people, for the local community, and the environment.

We’re looking to raise £100,000 to help us raise the last funds we need to connect everything up to the deep geothermal wells, and make the world's first geothermally distilled rum, proving geothermal works in the UK. Every supporter buying a bottle from Cask #11 gets to sign the back of the cask - we're aiming to fill this with 220 supporter signatures! Will you be the next person to sign?

Cask #11 is a very special 200 litre ex-bourbon Jack Daniels barrel which we will fill with the world's first geothermally distilled rum and mature it for approximately 3 years - the cask is currently resting in CSpace Newquay, the home of Crowdfunder!

What's geothermal and why?

We're all standing on top of a serious amount of wasted heat energy - the hot rocks 5km below Cornwall are nearly 200 degrees Celsius, hot enough to make 24/7 power for homes, no matter whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

There's geothermal potential right across the UK, but advocates like us are priced out by the fossil fuel and nuclear lobby and struggle to find the funding - there's not just a Climate Emergency, but an Energy Crisis and we need to make a stand together - we have found a way to tap into this abundant, natural and sustainable heat resource using high temperature heat pumps, and prove that it can be used to run commercial projects (and others, like roasting coffee or growing crops), creating  skilled green jobs and opportunities for younger generations - we've had so many young people reach out to us wanting a job, we just need the funds to bring it to life and make it happen. Your help would be amazing.

Why we need your funds

Your funds will help us rent the geothermal wells, buy our fermentation equipment, and employ our first full time distiller. If we make our stretch target, we'll have all the funds we need to rent all the pipes and pumps, and hire the specialist teams needed to help us put the submersible pump 300m down the geothermal well (as deep as The Shard), turn the steam on, and prove it works.

Our Origin Film

We’re committed to not only making great rum and promoting the benefits of geothermal energy for everyone, but we want to build a genuinely sustainable platform for future generations, creating jobs and apprenticeship opportunities for young people from all walks of life. Not only do we aspire to be a B-Corp when we’re up and running, we also want to use our project to help promote a little known platform for sustainability in the sugarcane industry, called Bonsucro, that does great things for all the sugarcane farming communities around the world.

We don’t believe that carbon-offsetting is enough - it’s too easy, and doesn’t actually change the way we do things. So we’re developing pioneering geothermal technology that other businesses that need lots of heat energy can use and benefit from too, like coffee roasting, making salt or growing crops. By working together, we believe we can start to break the control that the big energy companies have, and make geothermal more accessible and cheaper, possibly even free - we just have to tap into it and prove it works, which we can do!

This is your chance to buy a bottle or cask of the world’s first rum distilled using geothermal energy from the hot rocks beneath our feet, and support a project that can make really positive difference to people, planet and place.

We'd appreciate your support in sharing this online to help us spread the word to help us reach our target.

Our Team

We are really proud to have an amazing and diverse team, with some of the most experienced and knowledgeable people in the rum and hospitality industry, and very strong connections to Jamaica... amongst our team, we have Global Rum Ambassador Ian Burrell (below), one of the most effervescent and characterful people in the world of rum.

Ryan Chetiyawardana aka Mr Lyan (below), one of the most successful mixologists and creator of the world's first zero waste cocktail bar Lyaness

Carsten Vlierboom (below), one of the world's most renowned master rum blenders

Antonia Jamison, one of the founders of Sipsmith Gin, Michael Delevante, a legendary master distiller, and Moya Lambert, a super talented fermentation expert who started as a teenager in a Caribbean rum distillery lab. Last but not least, we have Matt Clifford, a former offshore helicopter pilot, inventor and engineer, who put Celsius Project together after losing his medical licence to fly, and a chance conversation with Ian Burrell…

Where did the idea come from?

We started with a crazy idea back in 2018 to see if we could recreate tropical cask ageing here in the UK, and we thought about redesigning an Eden style biome filled with casks of rum heated using geothermal energy.

Then we won a prestigious UK Green Distillery competition to develop technology that could help decarbonise the distillery sector, and we came up with the idea of a distillery heated by waste heat from the UK’s first geothermal power plant, being built in Cornwall.

Did you know that alcohol distillation is one of the most energy intensive 24/7 processes in the food and drink industry? Unless the energy is renewable, it means a lot of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere. But a lot of renewable energy sources can’t run 24/7.

This is why we started Celsius, we wanted to create great tasting Rum without the big environmental footprint. 

A better way

Celsius is a new business for a new age with a new vision, and we want to help find ways to fix the planet we already have, rather than trying to find ways to fly to Mars.

We’ve taking the plans we developed and scaled them down to create a micro distillery inside of shipping containers that we can bring to the quarry near Falmouth to create a pop-up geothermal distillery.

Connecting to these deep wells, hot water will be pumped up from 2.5 km below the surface (that’s 8 times deeper than the Shard is high) to power the distillery. 

Then comes the exciting part!

Over the space of 5 weeks we will be able to distill 4,000 litres of the world’s first geothermally distilled rum - we’re going to make as much rum as we can in the time that we have in the quarry, and then we’ll move the whole distillery next to the geothermal power plant when it comes online in 2023.

Nobody has ever attempted something like this, it will truly be a world first. 

What we are trying to achieve is to prove that it’s possible to use waste geothermal heat to help the drinks industry clean up its distilling process.

Our Style of Rum

Because our team have such strong ties to Jamaica, we're aiming to make a Jamaican style of rum, in homage to this wonderfully rich, funky and delicious style of rum - the best kind of rum you can drink. Jamaican rum is full-bodied and made from a 'wild' and natural fermentation process that gives a distinct flavour.

"The famous 'Jamaican funk' has been popular for centuries and oozes tropical fruits, wood, rubber, smoke, spices, and sweet caramel and molasses, perfect for blending, punches, and cocktails." (Ian Burrell)

Get involved 

This is our first ever crowdfund, and an opportunity for you to join us an help make this project possible. We are offering bottles and casks of our world-first geothermal Jamaican style rum for pre-sale. You can choose a pre-cask (un-matured) rum, bottled straight away after being distilled, or a cask-finished rum, that we will mature for you and bottle when it’s ready.

We can’t wait to have you on board!

Much love,

Matt Clifford, Founder of Celsius Project