Rum run molasses/cooked banana aftersmell

[Canecutter]

Hi All,

Have been reading all your posts re rum recipes for some time with great interest. 4 weeks ago tried one of the recommended molasses/sugar mixes - 5 litres/3kg up to 25 litres total. Put in 1 orange cut up and 1 lemon cut up + 2 tablespoons of citric acid. Used 48hr yeast.When preparing the wash I boiled it for a while and skimmed off as much scum off the surface as I could before fermenting - it did however keep forming after 10 minutes so I gave up! The molasses was fodder grade.

Distilled it using a detuned reflux still which gave me 80% abv in a single run. Problem is is that the distilled product has one hell of a molasses/cooked banana smell to it. It smells VERY sweet. I'm sure though that it would go AOK with cola.

Question is is this smell normal?? I'm used to the standard store bought rum, so this is an entirely new thing for me. I have it sitting in an oak barrel to try and bring it down a notch or two as the smell is very intense. I wonder if store bought products smell this way before they sit in barrels for years?

Any advice would be appreciated as I am mad keen to perfect rum distilling.

Regards

CCutter

[theholymackerel]

80% seems a bit much for a "detuned reflux". Is yer column insulated?

If not, insulate it and run it again and make good cuts and the smell/flavour will be under controll.





I wish ya luck.

[Canecutter]

My still is a detuned "pure distilling" still from Oz. It has a cooling coil are at the top of the column with the actual column about 2.2 inches wide. When using it detuned the temp inside the column gets up to about 83C and then slowely moves up to 91C, where I stop distilling. I cannot slow the still down lower than 83C no matter how quick the water rate.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say 'insulate' it holyM. Do you mean using a wet towel or something around the column?

Regards,

CCuter

[theholymackerel]

There are many ways to insulate a column... the easiest is probably to get some pipe insulation from a hardware store.

[ol' rummie]

Cardboard and tape works pretty good also.

[Canecutter]

Will look into the insulation side of things. In the meantime, anyone else have such intense smells from using a mollasses wash? I'm wondering whether it is just part of using mollasses as a base. I don't get this sort of smell from using brown sugar etc. I gotta say the shed smelled like a sugarcane mill!!

I wonder if this is what they call "a VERY FULL-BODIED RUM"!

Oh also tried the rum with some cola last night - excellent.