Skimmings

[SaltyStaves]

Last year, I dabbled with fresh sugar cane to try and introduce some of its character into my high ester rum.
I quickly discovered that I was not equipped to process it by crushing, so I used the garden mulcher as my 'plan B'.
This meant that along with the cane juice, the fibrous plant matter also comes along, so any cooking will extract a significant amount of Bagasse flavour. I believe that a hint of bagasse is desirable in the finished product and I do detect it in some quality commercial products, but generally, its kept to a minimum. It can dominate the rum if not used carefully.

I added minimal amounts of water and gently heated the cane 'soup' and ended up with a liquid with a gravity of around 1.020/5 Brix. It smelled very grassy and I decided not to use it. I put it aside under airlock and it developed a lacto infection, which eventually went back to smelling like grassy cane.

So this year, I thought I would be better prepared with a ghetto cane crusher made with fresh cut Bamboo. This worked really well. Until it broke before finishing the first crushed piece!
So I wheeled out the mulcher again...

First thing I did was remove the outer layer and kept it aside. I tried many tools, but the best was a curved potato peeler. Not the hinged type that swivel.

The mulched up cane was then wrapped up in cheese cloth and suspended in a large pot above a little bit of sugary water. I gave this a moderate steam for an hour, then removed the syrup, (which was a nice greenish brown with wax floating on the surface), opened up the cheese cloth and sparged the cane with some more fresh hot water and returned it to the heat for another hour. I did two batches like this. The leftover bagasse had no flavour and left no stickiness on my fingers. It was put aside to cool.

After the syrup had cooled off enough, I transferred it to plastic bottles and froze them.
They were then defrosted (peak summer down here at the moment, so this was not slow). The sugar and wax ran out first and clear ice water remained in the bottles.

Some of this liquid and the bagasse were put aside for other starters.
Most went into the pot with some hot lime.

I'd like to say that I foamy scums separated from the mixture, but in truth, it was all too clean. There was however, plenty of wax and this wax is very desirable and is a significant component of what makes skimmings contribute to the rum.

In Jamaica, skimmings are left to sour for 4-6 days by throwing them over cane trash.
This is where the outer roughage was utilised. Unlike the bagasse that was steamed, this was still sticky and had all of the microbes that were present on the cane (and some new ones no doubt). I used a shallow roasting dish as a trash cistern. Traditional cisterns were either copper or lead.

The wax made its way to the surface and a few days later, it was smelling like it looks. Infected! But in a good way.

The liquid was separated from the cane trash (which went into my pit) and added back to a plastic bottle and frozen again.

It will be defrosted just prior to putting together my next rum wash, or stripping run.
It has an extremely limited shelf life, so the fridge isn't an option.
What I hope, is that it contributes significantly to the mouth feel of my finished rum. A nice mouth coating waxiness that you don't get from straight molasses and just a hint of agricultural character from the bagasse.

[SaltyStaves]

Skimmings are a bit of a mystery ingredient in Caribbean style rum. They not only contain the foams and waxes from the boiled juice, but all of the waste water from the boilers after they've been washed down. So it contributes significant water to the wash and is very low in fermentable sugar.
In a traditional Jamaican rum wash, it can contribute to quarter of the total volume, so it is a significant component.

60 Litres of Skimmings are required to match the sugar content of 10L of Molasses. So with that, you can work out roughly how much to contribute.

[JohnsMyName]

This is very cool, thanks for sharing.

[distiller_dresden]

This is awesome Salty. I'm ordering some fresh cane to try this out.

When you say 'hot lime' do you mean lime? I have 500g of lab quality pure lime I use to bring acidity up in my washes, or my pit.

[SaltyStaves]

Hot milk of lime.

If you dump lime powder straight into your hot cane juice (or dunder), it won't mix very well. Add hot water to the lime to make a milk solution and then add that while its still hot.