Refluxed rum?

[kiwistiller]

I'm curious... Does anyone else here ever run rum through a reflux column?

I used to run it once through my crappy little CM still, which worked quite well, it was fruitier and more flavorsome that twice distilled in a pot... Now I've got a great big VM, and I'm a bit less confident in the rums ability to make it through and still be rum .

Does anyone else reflux rum, or am I all alone in the big wide world?

[HookLine]

My normal rum is all run through the pot still.

But I have run two batches of rum feints through the reflux column, in full reflux mode, though running faster than normal (ie lower reflux ratio). Got a very light rum-ish spirit, close to vodka. Most of the good rum flavours seem to get pulled out during the pot still runs. Perfectly good drink. Benefits a lot from some ageing. I did not oak it, so that could make it better.

You could try running it through the column in non-reflux mode, and in fractionating mode instead,... i.e. just using the packing only for separation... might be worth removing the column insulation. Or run it in reflux mode but with the valve wide open and vary the power input (and hence vapour speed, degree of separation, and output rate) to vary how much flavour comes over.

[kiwistiller]

Yeah I've finally got set up properly again after a bit of downtime, so now the rum washes are going again I figure its time to experiment. I do like a medium-light rum generally, and the compression of heads and tails using the cm really bumped up my hearts yield. two alternatives to using my vm I'm thinking about-
1- use the 1st meter of my column (it has a triclamp coupling there), packed, and chuck the pot head on top of that instead of the extra meter of vm OR
2- Build a slant plate head to go on top of the 1m packed column, so that I can get the reflux ration down to where I want it while still being able to compress heads somewhat.
might have to chuck up some pics of my new stilling cave soon

[Barney Fife]

I've used my un-packed reflux column for rum more than once. Much more than once... What I do is run lots of reflux to catch the fores and much of the heads, then open it up completely during the hearts, and when the temp begins to rise, I'd begin refluxing only enough to hold the same temp as I had during the wide open hearts fraction(on mine, that being around 96°c) until it wouldn't hold any longer. Made a good bit of great rum that way! Not as full bodied as I can get with my pot still, but still way better than commercial white rum, and with a better yield than the pot still.

If there's a "trick" to it, it's to not use any packing and run it hard/fast. In a fully packed reflux column, I can make a good neutral using the same molasses wash as with rum(well, okay, a second generation wash as I'd never waste good molasses on neutral!), so I know that will strip out all the flavor.

[kiwistiller]

I ended up using the top section of my VM column (it breaks in two) with reduced packing, so two copper scrubbers wound loose in the first 20cm or so, then about a foot of uninsulated column to a normal vm head. I followed your advice barney and after a brief equalizing, ran full open till temp started rising, closed a bit to bring it back down, and so on until I got tired and wanted to go to bed well, the wanting to go to bed thing, and also having made enough white rum to last me for springtime mojitos...

I shut down, wrapped a wet towel around the unit to help it cool, and when it was in no danger of steaming everywhere I chucked my pot head on and stripped the rest for a pot run.

Charge was about 30l of 50:50 molasses:sugar wash and 15 liters of feints (minus rum oils). After foreshots and probably a liter and change of heads, I have a wonderfully fruity, clean white rum @ ~85%.