Aging then carbon filtering

[Glock19Fan]

Hello.

I have just under 5 gallons of rum aging in a charred oak barrel. Over the past few months I have been testing it for color and flavor, and even though the flavor had exceeded what I was originally going for, I continued to age it. The oak was way over powering.

Anyway, I have came up with and been given several options.

1. is to blend it with a nuetral sprit, and it should lighten the flavor and color to a desired point.

2. quickly filter through activated carbon, and if it is still too rough, blend with a lighter or neutral spirit.

3. Slowly filter the rum through activated carbon and strip all the flavor and color away, then re barrel it for another 6 months to a year. From what I understand the second time around should be less harsh, and with only the color and flavors being filtered out, some of the "magic" should still be in there?

At the point I am at, and more importantly the place I live now, distilling additional spirit really isnt an option, so I am more for the filtering options, but I am open for any suggestions.

Thanks!

[rad14701]

My first attempt would be to add some additional spirit (white dog) to see it that gets your spirits where you want them to be... If that doesn't help, due to overbearing flavor characteristics, then you would probably be better off stripping a majority of the flavor using carbon filtering... I might be inclined to dilute and re-distill before carbon filtering, but that's just me because I'm not fond of carbon filtering...