Fakin' Jamaican Rum

[Dokimos]

Fakin' Jamaican Rum

I wanted to make a funky jamaican style rum using live dunder in the wash since there aren't a lot of reports on the subject that I could find. After doing it, I would to encourage others to embrace the funk and get those microbes in your wash.

I didn't take great notes through this process but everything should be + or - 10% for all the numbers provided.

5 gallons Golden Barrel molasses
5 gallons clean dunder
4 gallons infected dunder (muck, see below)
10 to 20 lbs sugar (to potential ABV of 13.5%)
Water to 25 gallons
1 tbsp Avacado oil
11 Multivitamins w/ zinc
1 pint boiled yeast
100 grams brewshop yeast nutrient
44 grams Voss Kveik yeast, hydrated

First, I boiled the clean dunder to sterilize along with 2 gallons of water, then added to all the other ingredients minus the kviek yeast and infected dunder. The temp came out to about 36 degrees C. I added the hydrated yeast and blitzed it with my paint mixer to mix and aerate.

By the next day, fermentation was bumping. The thing looked like it was boiling. According to my hydrometer, it was about 4% ABV but hydrometers can't be trusted with molasses around. The temp was about 36 C.

At this point, I added 2 gallons of muck/infected dunder which was about 2 months old. To this muck I had added a bit of homemade tepache, gruyere cheese for proprionic bacteria, a microwaved potato to provide resistant starches, a splash of fermented pickle brine, a stick from my apple tree, and the head of a goat. Lol just kidding about the goat. Though my dog did stick his tounge in the wash when it was clean and cold. The headspace of the dunder pit/bucket smelled of strawberries, bananas, and general funky fruitiness for most of the time, though when allowed to air out, smelled generally bad with funky sour notes dominating. This makes me think the precursors for esters are there, but not the oxygen. That would explain why it takes over 6 months of aging for a rum like this to smell fruity in my experience. Also, two oxygen atoms are required for each ester molecule, so esters cannot form without it coming from somewhere. Food for thought.

The fermentation did not seem to mind the addition of muck. On the contrary, it fermented out dry in a total of 2.5 days. It fermented to 12 to 13% ABV based on the volume and ABV of the resulting low wines. Unfortunately I didn't take a pH reading of the wash so I don't know how low it got. The wash sat for two or three days after fermentation before doing my stripping runs.

I did both stripping runs through a pot still with some copper scrap in the boiler to eliminate sulfides, and you wouldn't believe how clean that copper came out. I stripped to 10% ABV. This resulted in about 9 gallons of low wines at about 47.5% ABV.

All this went into the still with 2 more gallons of muck and was distilled through my 4' tall open column which closely resembles that of Jesse from Still It (shout out to my inspiration for starting in the hobby!) I ran it with a pencil lead stream with one bunch of copper mesh stuffed into the bottom of the column.

I collected quarts for jars 1 through 15 and pints up to jar 32 which ended at 12% ABV. I kept jars 6 through 30. From beginning to end, that's 12 pints as feints and 25 as hearts. So I kept about 2/3 of the distillate. Typically after a year of aging, my spirits are a little flat but smooth. I typically do from 1/3 to 1/2 of the total distillate and get this result. I'm hoping that such a wide cut I'll get some funk and interesting twang after some aging. I'm hoping the sourness of the late tails adds something interesting to the mix.

The new make has an artificial banana aroma and flavor (isoamyl acetate), as well as bubble gum and cherry. It actually reminds me a bit of J Wray and Nephew overproof. There is a bit of grunge I associate with tails. There's no grassiness that I get from appleton estate. Usually I don't like my rum straight off the still and this is no exception but the fruitiness makes it more balanced. I think it'll be good in coffee or with fruit juice.

My yeild was 2 and 3/4 gallons at 65% which is the undiluted ABV off the still. The still charge was at about 40% so this indicates a relatively low tails cut, which is definitely the case looking at my cuts sheet. For one of the gallon jugs of hearts, I'm using ex-PX sherry French toasted oak and ex-wheat whiskey toasted american white oak. For the second jug, it's the same but the French oak isn't sherried. I haven't decided what to do with the rest.

During my recent rum kick, I made 3 batches of rum with 5 gallons of molasses for each. This is the third in the series. I used all molasses for the first one and refluxed to 86% with a tight heart cut. The second was basically a buccaneer bob's with the feints from the first run. And this is the third with feints from the second run. I got one gallon from the refluxed run and two gallons from the buccaneer bobs rum. I have 5 and 3/4 gallons in total. I shoulda got a barrel!!

Anyway, I'm glad I ventured into this project and I'll try to report back on this rum as it ages. Hopefully in a year I have a funky and tropical rum that encourages others to try making rum with terrible, terrible sanitation practices. It sure is fun.

Cheers!

[Dokimos]

Here is my cuts sheet

[JustinNZ]

Man, that was an awesome read! Good rum buzz you’ve got going. I’m gonna make my first muck now, so thanks for the inspiration. I’m also going to keep my fermentation temps a little higher. Will be curious to see how your six month and one year tastings go. Cheers.

[Dokimos]

Yeah man thanks for the reply! I hope you found it helpful. I wish I could give you a muck starter. I'd recommend increasing the fermentation temp a bit, at least if you're using the same yeast as me. I couldn't pick out any flavors that I thought for sure came from the yeast. I'll probably use kviek in the summertime for whiskey for that reason.

[Dokimos]

Here's a picture of my muck bucket for the other weirdos who are into this kind of thing

[Just-JB]

This is a great read and an awesome experiment!