Very Bacardi (ish)

[Pikey]

Hi all, I've developed a method of producing something which is close to Bacardi in flavour and I'd be grateful if one or two of you would try it and give your opinions please.

Firstly, the quantity is quite large so you mat want to reduce the proportions.

2.5 kg Molasses
22 kg plain white sugar
Water to 100 Litres at about 80-90 degrees F
about 25 gms Tronozymol or similar.
about 50 gms citric acid
4 sachets Lalvin EC 1118 yeast, started in a starter bottle and fed with sugar, shaken regularly to aeriate the starter and encourage yeast breeding - for about a day.

I put all the ingredients into a 110 litre food grade plastic fermenter and aeriate with an aquarium pump for about a half hour. Fermentation Temp held around 23 degees C.

After a day the ferment starts noticeably moving at the surface and after a while it is heaving and you can hear a significant hissing.

When the movement stops and bubbling is no more, it tastes quite bitter and it is time to run it.

I use a 25 L still with an offset column. In theory the column should be packed for reflus, but all packing is removed and the reflux valve closed, so the only reflux I get is caused by cooling of the column in the air. The run starts when the boiler temp is around 80 degrees C and the column temp (measured at the head reaches around 77 degrees C). During the initial 100 ml of fores being condensed, the head temp raises to around 88 degrees C and the fores are removed for cleaning firelighting etc.

I then take a 70 cl bottle of heads at 65-70% abv and keep separate.

The next portion I do not bother separating. this is my hearts and I run these until the head temperature reaches 95 degrees C - this will be somewher between 2.8 and 4 litres (depends whether this is my first run or has had the heads and tails from the previous run put back in the boiler) This portion is a little over 60% abv on my kit.

I then take another portion up to 96.5 degrees, one from 96.5 to 98 degrees and a last one from 98 degrees to 99.5 or so. - by this time the abv is down in the 20's and although I have run up to 103 degrees or so it really isn't worth the effort. Looking at these portions the next day, various degrees of cloudiness can be seen.

The heads and tails go back into the still for the next run.

I am told by those who reject anything except "Real Bacardi" that the hearts tastes exactly like Bacardi, although it is at 60% not 37.5% and I have to measure it exactly with a measure, at 35-40 ml and dilute it with "Pepsi" as tho it was a treble !

I have searched "Bacardi" on the "Google search" and mainly find people asking for a "Bacardi recipe".

PLease suspend disbelief for a while and give this one a try - It seems to work for us and clearly is not expensive to produce. I would like some others with equally fussy wives to give it a go and let me know what they think ?

atb

P

[mulligan]

I'm a little surprised you are getting as far as 95C before tails, but obv it depends on still, thermometer placing and wash. 92 is top end for me.
I make very similar, but there's golden syrup and some demerara sugar in my version.

edit : just noticed yours is a single run. I do strip and then spirit run.

[dukethebeagle120]

if i remember right,bacardi is carbon filtered.i do mine that way anyhow and
my wife has now began to not buy store bought and drinks home brew``yes``
some scoff at carbon filtering but cuban style rums are very light.
so thats how i get good results

[vqstatesman]

Glad to hear you have a product you enjoy

Bacardi barrel age their rum and then carbon filter as do I also. Although I use dominos not barrels I also use much more molasses (20L and 20Kg sugar in a 150L ferment.

Bacardi are secretive about what blend of carbon they use. Personally I use coconut carbon which works very well.

[googe]

last time i tasted bacardi, all i could taste was heads, nearly through it back at the barmaid lol.

[Pikey]

last time i tasted bacardi, all i could taste was heads, nearly through it back at the barmaid lol.

Personally, I'm not sure exactly what the point is in making something so light and then drowning it with mixer (i'm very "neutral" about it too) - but it seems to be how people want to drink it and who am I to disobey "she who must be obeyed " ?

Thank you all for your comments so far. All I can say is that made this way and cooked through my offset still without packing, this comes out at 60% or a little more and does not have "nasty tastes" in the hearts, so I don't see the need for double distilling, or carboning. This can be taken straight from the discharge pipe and drunk straight away, (making due allowance for the proof level) at what seems to be a very good facsimile of the flavour which comes out of "Their" bottle.

Easy enough to divide all the ingredients by 4 and do a 25 Litre batch - if anyone wants to have a go at checking what I say.

[But please - if any new still owners try it - PLEASE bear in mind the yeast I use and do Not put a turbo yeast anywhere near it !]

[rgreen2002]

The best Bacardi is the original Bacardi. Located in Cuba and now called Santiago de Cuba( in the town of the same name on Cuba's west coast). They have many different ages but the most common are 7,12, and 15 year, They just get better and better every year. I had a glass of some 22 (maybe 25) year.... tasted like air it was so light!

[mulligan]

I rarely drink commercial white spirits any more, but people clearly mistakenly associate "bite" from heads with alcohol strength.

I had a couple of visitors the other week. One is a friend. The other is a friend of the friend, so an acquaintance at kindest.

Mister know it all complemented me on my booze, but said it was a pity I hadn't made it stronger as it lacked oomph!

I neglected to tell him it was 50% abv and let him work away as he helped himself to ever larger measures.

To say that he fell out of my house would be an understatement!

Feedback from my friend is that apparently the guy says it can't have been that strong as he didn't have a hangover next day.

I recall not totally different anecdotes from all inclusive vacations where people said they'd drank many measures of the local spirits and had no hangover next day, so it was clearly watered down.

[mulligan]

Pikey, you are clearly making good conservative cuts with as you say a clean wash so getting good hearts and no heads included, so nice and smooth.

I don't carbon filter, but do prefer a double run. No criticism, just preference.

If I were to make a suggestion, I'd try using the dunder from a run in with your next wash when starting it. It probably won't make as much difference with the smaller amount of molasses you use, but it does make it a little more flavourful.

[Pikey]

Pikey, you are clearly making good conservative cuts with as you say a clean wash so getting good hearts and no heads included, so nice and smooth.

I don't carbon filter, but do prefer a double run. No criticism, just preference.

If I were to make a suggestion, I'd try using the dunder from a run in with your next wash when starting it. It probably won't make as much difference with the smaller amount of molasses you use, but it does make it a little more flavourful.

Thanks for your input mulligan - I'm certainly not going to take offence at any suggestions - What type of still do you run ?

The reason I make "conservative cuts" on this particular recipe is because I was getting Too Much flavour. With the heads and the first bottle of tails included I was getting something mild but with a flavour beginning to resemble a "navy Rum" - (the only type of rum I personally like. ) cutting deeply all the heads and dropping all the tails has produced this, my offering, in my attempt to reproduce a "Bacardi flavour"

I'm not sure whether you have anything like rowntrees fruit pastilles where you are, but when I was a kid, those who had worked in factories like that refused to eat the black ones 'cos that's where all the swwepings off the floor and any other rubbish went !

Now going back to the orininal rum centuries ago, The stuff they sold us for the Navy etc was poisonous, since the only worms they had were made of lead pipes and as we know from other threads / anecdotes, "running rum tends to Gum your still up" - So I'm wondering whether the "clear rums" came from those "in the know" refusing to drink the rubbish we were sold and demanding clear spirit from the very middle of the distillation ?

I don't have any problem cleaning out my worm because I use a "knock down coil" which I can clean the outside of and that's fine, but in the 1700s, trying to clean the inside of a lead "worm" could have been a major problem. I'm thinking that the foreshots and heads would tend to dissolve any "Tarry type gunk" and carry that through into the distillate. By the time the "hearts" were pulled, it would be clearer and perhaps then running the distillate through a filter bed of chatrcoal, would further "clean it" ? The murky "tails" then would perhaps build up further deposits on the insides of the still and worm ?

I am guessing here, but I do love that "Navy stuff" and do you know what ? - I'm not going to put my heads and tails back into the pot for redistilling next time I do a bacardi run, I'm going to throw them in with a much heavier distillate (More mollasses and dunder) - but not before distillation, AFTER the distillate comes out !

Then I only have to work out a way of turning it black and fruity (possibly to disguise "off-flavours" and disguise the "cloudiness" - [ I have some optimism since I can't get anywhere close to a real "Navy" rum and had decided to give up on it !

[mulligan]

I believe that navy rum was made in wooden stills which certainly wouldn't be easy to replicate.

My best guess would be to oak age some of your bacardi type stuff or stuff made with more molasses and then redistill it. As you say, this would be a potential good use for your heads and tails.

[Pikey]

..........Then I only have to work out a way of turning it black .......

Then in another thread I found this :

Granted Salty but the guy was saying his rum wasn't what he perceived as rum so as most commercial rum has caramel and some has a damn lot so it may well be what is missing out of the profile he is looking for. I generally don't add it and if i do it is to a tempered bottle to drink straight away, it does give it that Captain Morgan Jerry sailor type of style that is pretty ok in a mixer like coke or dry

So a quick trip down to Tescrow (Wallmart equiv to you guys) and buy some " Gravy Browning" then

[Pikey]

I'm a little surprised you are getting as far as 95C before tails, but obv it depends on still, thermometer placing and wash. 92 is top end for me.
I make very similar, but there's golden syrup and some demerara sugar in my version.

edit : just noticed yours is a single run. I do strip and then spirit run.

Thinking on this mulligan and I agree - I use a digital meat thermometer and my temp is measured at the centre of the offset where the vapour flows through into the condenser - so maximum flow / max head temp ?

What Temp do you start running "heads" at ? - as I said mine start around 88 degrees after the fores are extracted.

What kind of apparatus do you use ?