Now its time for me to focus on improving our rums. Let me start by saying that I am not a chemist, an engineer, a master distiller or anything of the sort. I am just a guy chasing a crazy dream with some lifelong buddies and we've screwed-up and done a few things right somehow to get us going. I would like to humbly ask that the much more knowlegeable and experienced folks who constitute the membership of this board give our current process a review to give me feedback / ideas on how we may do anything different.
We run a 2000 liter copper pot with a 700 liter copper thumper with a dephlegmator and condensing column. Our system is heated with steam produced by a boiler fired with our own sugar cane bagasse. We ferment our own molasses that we produce at our adjacent sugar mill in a bank of 2000 liter conical stainless steel fermenters and here is our process. Our goal is to make a 'Jamaican style" heavy bodies and really flavorful rum. To date, our rums have been absolutely drinkable, but a little "dry" and not very complex in flavor.
- we dilute our own organic molasses that we produce at our adjacent sugar mill (while technical blackstrap, it is very sweet at 85+ BRIX). We dilute with treated vinasse water (more on that below)
- we add circa 200 liters of pot stillage / backset from the previous pot distilation.
- we also add about 200 liters of untreated vinasse that has sat in our ponds for months (really funky stuff...akin to 'infected dunder' that smells like vomit)
- we dilute to about 22 BRIX and ferment for 5 to 6 days usually (temperature controlled at 28 Celsius)
- once the fermentation has ceased, typically have 8-10% in our wash. At that point we add about 200 liters of freshly squeezed cane juice and let it sit for an additional 3 or 4 days
- recently, we added one last step to help increase the esterification of our fermentation. We added 30 liters of cane vinegar and about 1 ml of sulfuric acid.
A quick background on what "treated vinasse water" is... We have a continuous column at our distillery that we produce 95% ABV 'light rum' with. We produce about 7500 liters of light rum per day there and over 100,000 liters of stillage (vinasse). We have a system to treat that vinasse to seperate the solids from the liquids. We collect the solids in a rolling drum seperator and use them as organic fertilizer inputs for our fields. The liquid we discharge into holding ponds on our site. After some experimenting, we decided to try using this liquid to dilute our molasses for fermentation, with the goal being to help improve the final taste of our rums and to add more robust flavors through higher ester counts in the rums
Thank you all!
