Background
This summer I will be going to my wife's country and I wanted to make some nice Rum to bring. Not that Rum is expensive there. Ha, no alcohol is! But I know my inlaws also love that moment between beach and dinner, and I love my inlaws. So I was thinking why not make some Rum for the family? Not the complex Rums that I have been making up to now, though. No, I am talking easy drinking Rum, but made on molasses, the perfect for mixing.
Moose influence and mentorship
This is where I make a shout-out to forum member Mooseman! Moose has been my mentor on this project, giving me direction and approach, loads of valuable tips, and just generally supporting me to keep me on the thin and narrow. Thanks, Moose!
Given that there wasn't much time to plan this and mature the rum before bottling, I asked Moose for some help. The approach he suggested is simple. Make a molasses high proof rum and make a sugar-based high proof neutral. Blend the two to the level of easy-drinking I want: 50/50, 75/25, 25/75 - you get the idea. I loved the approach and decided to make it my Summer Rum project.
Molasses
First challenge for me was molasses. My habitat is not sugar cane country and the cheapest local source of molasses will cost me 8.5 USD per liter. However, excellent Dutch homebrew and distilling shop Stookwinkels were (are still) selling 10L/14kg cans of Caribbean Blackstrap molasses with a reduced price and even with shipping the cost was almost half of the local alternative. With the molasses delivered I was now able to proceed with the project. The neutral spirit would be made from simple table sugar. No sweat.
The project's approach
1. First batch - getting the Dunder. I needed a low gravity "rum" batch using dark muscovado sugar, stripping it to produce dunder for the next step.
2. Second batch - first molasses batch, fermented with dunder from step 1, and then stripped
3. Batch 3 and 4 - finalizing the molasses batches using dunder from step 2, stripping both
4. Reflux spirit run of batches 1-4, keeping the feints
5. Neutral batches 5, 6, and 7 - table sugar washes using 20% dunder from step 3, stripping all three
6. Reflux spirit run of batches 5-7, adding the feints from step 4
7. Final step: blending the molasses product with the neutral sugar based product, proofing it down to 40%
My idea has been to make mostly "white" clean Rum, inoffensive cocktail blending rum. But some of the product I will keep for making Golden easy drinking rum, using old oak sticks that I still think have a bit of oumpff in them.
The Challenge'
Moose's suggestion was to reflux the molasses based rum and the sugar wash. I haven't used my reflux set up, with dephlegmator and column packing, since this winter when I was trying to reflux last year's Rum feints. The disconnecting hoses, the water everywhere, the mess, made me swear to not touch the reflux set up in 2026. But I decided to give it another try.
More to come.