Sorghum Rum
Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:21 am
This is posted elsewhere, but I thought that it may be more appropriate to be posted here under a title that is a little more accurate.
I am happily consuming my sorghum rum and I consider my project a huge success! I want to post my recipe so that anyone interested can give it a try and some of you more experienced distillers can give me a few pointers.
I started by boiling 5 lbs of mollasses and 5 lbs of white sugar with a tsp of yeast nutrient and added water to get a total volume of 7 gallons of wash. After it cooled, I pitched one pack of baker's yeast and one pack of champagne yeast. I'm not sure which one worked, but something did. The fermentation was a little slow and it took about 20 days to ferment dry.
Once fermentation was done, I reused all of the backset with 7 lbs of brown sugar. Even though I did not use yeast nutrient, this fermentation was much faster. I allow the backset to cool before pouring it back into the fermentor and it too right off from the yeast left in the sludge in the bottom.
Once this fermentation was done, I reset the dunder again with 7 more pounds of brown sugar following the above steps.
I then combined the three runs for my spirit run. I removed about a pint of foreshots and about a quart of heads. I collected down to 50%. After diluting to 80 proof, I still had well over 2 gallons of rum.
I spiced this rum with ginger, cinnamon, and cloves; following a recipe from the parent site for spiced rum. If I had it to do over, I would add less cinnamon. Other than that, it was great. The rum had a buttery smell and a smooth mellow taste. It didn't have as much flavor as some of the dark rums that I have tasted, but it is still very good.
I realize that to a certain extent, my rum was a light, brown sugar rum. My goal was to utilize the sorghum that was readily available and I feel that I was pretty successful in that. Just for reference, this was my third attempt at creating this recipe and the first 2 didn't turn out nearly as well.
I welcome any suggestions that anyone has to improve this recipe and would love to hear from anyone else that has been incorporating sorghum into their product.
I am happily consuming my sorghum rum and I consider my project a huge success! I want to post my recipe so that anyone interested can give it a try and some of you more experienced distillers can give me a few pointers.
I started by boiling 5 lbs of mollasses and 5 lbs of white sugar with a tsp of yeast nutrient and added water to get a total volume of 7 gallons of wash. After it cooled, I pitched one pack of baker's yeast and one pack of champagne yeast. I'm not sure which one worked, but something did. The fermentation was a little slow and it took about 20 days to ferment dry.
Once fermentation was done, I reused all of the backset with 7 lbs of brown sugar. Even though I did not use yeast nutrient, this fermentation was much faster. I allow the backset to cool before pouring it back into the fermentor and it too right off from the yeast left in the sludge in the bottom.
Once this fermentation was done, I reset the dunder again with 7 more pounds of brown sugar following the above steps.
I then combined the three runs for my spirit run. I removed about a pint of foreshots and about a quart of heads. I collected down to 50%. After diluting to 80 proof, I still had well over 2 gallons of rum.
I spiced this rum with ginger, cinnamon, and cloves; following a recipe from the parent site for spiced rum. If I had it to do over, I would add less cinnamon. Other than that, it was great. The rum had a buttery smell and a smooth mellow taste. It didn't have as much flavor as some of the dark rums that I have tasted, but it is still very good.
I realize that to a certain extent, my rum was a light, brown sugar rum. My goal was to utilize the sorghum that was readily available and I feel that I was pretty successful in that. Just for reference, this was my third attempt at creating this recipe and the first 2 didn't turn out nearly as well.
I welcome any suggestions that anyone has to improve this recipe and would love to hear from anyone else that has been incorporating sorghum into their product.