I am looking to purchase a sizeable quantity of molasses from a wholesaler to use in making rum. They provided me with a test that was done by a lab and I am trying to figure out the fermentable sugars in the molasses to determine how much to dilute it. Could you please help me with my calculations?
sucrose: 32/100
fructose: 11/100
glucose: 18/100
In my previous recipe I would simply look at the nutrition facts of the molasses and there would be only one "sugar" but this is now a bit more scientific
Someone else please correct me if I'm wrong, but if the readings are for sucrose, glucose and fructose then all of those should be potentially able to all ferment out with the right nutrients and yeast. Looks like good stuff!
Looks like a fairly high sugar yield, 61 parts out of 100, with the rest presumably water and unfermentables. What type of molasses are you getting? Are the measurements grams per weight or volume?
It is from a small 20,000 m2 plantation that runs a ma and pop shop and cook down the cane juice themselves. the measurements are by weight per 100 gr. I wish I could get a small sample and try out an SG measurement but they are pretty far and only sell to wholesalers in bulk. I am excited to read your comments!
seamusm53 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 27, 2021 12:42 pm
All three sugars are fermentable though yeast must first convert sucrose to glucose and fructose via the enzyme invertase.
You don't need to, the yeast will break the sucrose into glucose and fructose on their own. It has been clearly demonstrated that there is little benefit to actively inverting sucrose, minor gains not likely worth the effort.
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Zed
When the Student is ready, the Master will appear.
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Our large modern commercial mills produce mollases as by product at what is claimed to be 45-50% fermentable sugars.
A small inefficient operation could easily be leaving 61% of the sugars behind Im guessing.
From your description, it sounds more like panela than molasses.
If that is the case, there won't be a lot of non-sugars influencing the SG reading and I would make it up to around SG 1.070 for the first generation and work out where to go from there.
Saltbush Bill wrote: ↑Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:42 pm
Our large modern commercial mills produce mollases as by product at what is claimed to be 45-50% fermentable sugars.
A small inefficient operation could easily be leaving 61% of the sugars behind Im guessing.
That is very interesting. I wonder what the difference is between modern techniques and this small family operation. From what I understand from them, they just squeeze the cane juice and then simmer it for 10 hours, thats all they do.
Molasses is a byproduct of sugar production. What Ma & Pop are making hasn't had any sugar removed, so it's not molasses. Search the site for panela and jaggery. Some of my favorite rums are made by distilleries that use sugar cane juice rather than molasses from sugar mills. I would love to get my hands on what you've been offered.
Denizh wrote: ↑Thu Jan 28, 2021 1:28 am
If I am stuck on semantics, will it no longer qualify as rum since I am not using traditional molasses then?
To be qualified as rum it needs to be made using products from sugar cane, like molasses, cane juice etc.
Molasses would be the most commonly used, although in former French colonies they use cane juice since they historically weren't allowed to export the refined cane sugar to France but they could export rum.
Good luck with your rum!
Cheers,
Berserk
He who stumbles around in darkness with a stick is blind.
But he who sticks out in darkness is fluorescent!
