Sorghum Rum

[Ifounditlikethat]

I’ve spent quite a few hours lately calling sorghum farmers from southern Indian to northern Georgia. I didn’t do it for the sake of my upcoming attempts to make sorghum rum. I’m looking at planting a few acres on my farm for a long list of beneficial reasons. Here are some things I learned that directly concern distilled spirits.

Sorghum and sugar cane are genetically closer to one another than most varieties of corn are to their family members. And even then, there are allot of verities of sugar cane and sorghum. A good comparison a farmer made while I visited was comparing cane verities to cherry trees.

Sorghum whiskey is made by harvesting the giant seed heads and using them as part of a grain bill for a wash.

Sorghum rum was a big deal pre-prohibition in the mid-west USA. Prohibition is what knocked sorghum out of the top 5 crops to grow. Apparently growing sorghum in East TN was a surefire way to get a bunch of people in hoods burning a cross in your field because alcohol “undermined the good Christian values white peoples should uphold” or some crap like that. People plowed under their sorghum and grew tobacco instead.

So; regardless of what the TTB or anybody else says, I’m calling what I’m about to ferment sorghum rum. After turkey day I’m going up the road to get 5 gallons of sorghum syrup from a nearby farmer. I have no idea how many proof gallons I’m going to get, but I’ll keep y’all posted. I’ve never made any kind of rum until now so I figured I’ll post my plans and get feedback before I waste ingredients.

Recipe 1:
2 cups raisins
10 gallons water
2 gallons sorghum syrup
Top up with brown sugar until I hit a SG I’m happy with
Pitch rum yeast I started the day before on molasses and nutrient blend.
Split the wash into two fermenters and add cheese culture to one of them. That was actually a suggestion from an old Amish guy in Ohio. We have it on the farm for making cheese so I figured I’d try it.
Let it ferment out dry and rack into secondaries for another week mostly for the benefit of the cheese infection bucket.

I’m using an 8 gallon speak easy so I’ll do separate stripping and first spirit runs. If there is a noticeable difference between the two I’ll keep the third run separate. If not it’s all getting mixed together

I’ve got an 8qt BadMo bbl with medium toast and light char waiting for it. If the first try is crap I’ll at least get to season my barrel for a few weeks before serving some swill to my Marine Corps buddies over the holidays.