Clairin - sugar cane rum from haiti

[Chauncey]

So as a gift for a good friend of mine, i am trying to go about making some clairin/kleren style rum for him. my research shows that it is made in a great many small distilleries amongst the cane fields of haiti, and it seems it is made from juice though i have read it is also made from the sugar.

does anyone have any experience working with such a product? any recipes, ideas, taste notes, or other information you may have would be great as its a hard product to source to sample and with the decentralized nature of Haitian distillers; even trying one or two may make it hard to really nail down the style because they may not be representative of what is most common down there.

i know its similar to cachacas and rhum agricole so im going to do some reading around the forum on those because i know ive seen some threads about them.

i do live in louisiana, and knowing how expensive commercial cane juice ive seen at restaurant supply is im thinking i may be able to obtain some actual cane, and juice some and combine that with a dark brown cane sugar for a fermentation. as id imagine a whole shitload of cane would be required to make enough juice to ferment out on its own enough wash for a couple stripping runs. thus just using some to add to a ferment seems like it might be a way to make a similar product without the bulk of cane.

that being said i dont know if they strip and spirit or if they use single pots, thumper, double thumper or what...research to be done.