Molasses Rum Success
Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 12:54 am
Not had much luck so far with Whiskey, although I can make a passable Brandy so when I saw the local feed store had Molasses I thought I'd have a try at Rum.
It comes in 7 litre plastic containers and It's sold as a supplement for stud horses. Hey I thought! Just what I need.
Wasn't sure how much sugar this tub represents. No point trying to measure it with a hydrometer: I could stand a spoon up in it. I reckon if'n you had enough, you could walk on it.
Part of the blurb on the pack boasts about how there's virtually no calories in it so I took that to mean there was little to no sugar left in it.
So I poured the whole tub into a 25 litre fermenter and added 3kg sugar. Then I topped it up with tap water and threw in a packet of bakers yeast (7g). I tried to take a hydrometer reading but it was off-scale.
Then I noticed on the back of the tub that it contained an antioxidant 'mold-nil'. Damn! What's that goin' to do to me? or worse, the yeast. Well, after a think about it I reckoned that if it's good for expensive race-horses, it oughter be good fer me. The yeast would just have to take it's chances - and I threw in three more packets.
That night I checked on it late and it was just sittin' there sulking.
But next morning it was bubblin' fit to burst. It did that for five days straight then settled to a steady belch every few seconds. After ten days it was done. I took a hydrometer reading - pretty meaningless but it was 1.07, which was a lot less than before.
I ran two stripping runs, hard and fast and pulled out 7 litres of low wines at 50% abv! Hot Damn! The wash must have been around 14%.
The fermenter had no more than a pint of lees in the bottom, almost all 25 litres went in the still. Best ferment I've ever seen.
Must say, I hesitated over putting 7 litres of flamable spirit in the still and boiling it but decided to check over carefully fer leaks and take the risk. Fer good measure, I tossed in 2 litres of Brandy feints I had handy. I guess that's optional.
My still isn't a full-on reflux. It has a pan-scrubber column, which seems to work to a degree. If'n I keep the heat right down I can trickle out the high boiling point fractions slowly at the start, which seems to clean up the body. The slower I do it the less heads and more body I get and the sharper the changeover appears. Same at the tails. I avoid turnin' up the heat too much - just enough to keep it drippin' and the switchover becomes much clearer. The dripping slows as the heavier fractions just fail to make the top of the column. Then I can tip them over by just nudgin' the heat up.
Anyways. I took close on two hours to take out the first 600ml (first 50 ml goes as bug-killer, the rest is heads and goes in the feints bottle). During this time, I was gettin' 90%abv around 79C. After that, the temperature took a jump to 80 and the abv went to 85 so I started collecting the body. The 'heads' still tasted and smelled OK to me but I've learned not to trust my taste durin' a run - the nasty taste only comes though when I'm sittin' by the fire at the end of the day. Besides, it ain't lost - I'll toss them in with the next run.
Likewise, the tails was pretty obvious. The temperature and abv stayed stable for almost 3 litres of 85%-82% abv then suddenly took off towards 90 degrees. I collected a bit into the tails down to 60%abv (getting a strong taste of Molasses now and a faint smell of.. dunno is that lavendar? Probably 'mold-nil' ) and then switched to feints. Got about a litre of tails into the feints bottle.
I had a few shots before bedtime and put some oak chips in with the rest to age for a while.
But it's good to drink now. Doesn't smell like store-bought rum but it sure tastes like rum. Got a nice peppery bite to it too.
Hope this is of use to somebody.
It comes in 7 litre plastic containers and It's sold as a supplement for stud horses. Hey I thought! Just what I need.
Wasn't sure how much sugar this tub represents. No point trying to measure it with a hydrometer: I could stand a spoon up in it. I reckon if'n you had enough, you could walk on it.
Part of the blurb on the pack boasts about how there's virtually no calories in it so I took that to mean there was little to no sugar left in it.
So I poured the whole tub into a 25 litre fermenter and added 3kg sugar. Then I topped it up with tap water and threw in a packet of bakers yeast (7g). I tried to take a hydrometer reading but it was off-scale.
Then I noticed on the back of the tub that it contained an antioxidant 'mold-nil'. Damn! What's that goin' to do to me? or worse, the yeast. Well, after a think about it I reckoned that if it's good for expensive race-horses, it oughter be good fer me. The yeast would just have to take it's chances - and I threw in three more packets.
That night I checked on it late and it was just sittin' there sulking.
But next morning it was bubblin' fit to burst. It did that for five days straight then settled to a steady belch every few seconds. After ten days it was done. I took a hydrometer reading - pretty meaningless but it was 1.07, which was a lot less than before.
I ran two stripping runs, hard and fast and pulled out 7 litres of low wines at 50% abv! Hot Damn! The wash must have been around 14%.
The fermenter had no more than a pint of lees in the bottom, almost all 25 litres went in the still. Best ferment I've ever seen.
Must say, I hesitated over putting 7 litres of flamable spirit in the still and boiling it but decided to check over carefully fer leaks and take the risk. Fer good measure, I tossed in 2 litres of Brandy feints I had handy. I guess that's optional.
My still isn't a full-on reflux. It has a pan-scrubber column, which seems to work to a degree. If'n I keep the heat right down I can trickle out the high boiling point fractions slowly at the start, which seems to clean up the body. The slower I do it the less heads and more body I get and the sharper the changeover appears. Same at the tails. I avoid turnin' up the heat too much - just enough to keep it drippin' and the switchover becomes much clearer. The dripping slows as the heavier fractions just fail to make the top of the column. Then I can tip them over by just nudgin' the heat up.
Anyways. I took close on two hours to take out the first 600ml (first 50 ml goes as bug-killer, the rest is heads and goes in the feints bottle). During this time, I was gettin' 90%abv around 79C. After that, the temperature took a jump to 80 and the abv went to 85 so I started collecting the body. The 'heads' still tasted and smelled OK to me but I've learned not to trust my taste durin' a run - the nasty taste only comes though when I'm sittin' by the fire at the end of the day. Besides, it ain't lost - I'll toss them in with the next run.
Likewise, the tails was pretty obvious. The temperature and abv stayed stable for almost 3 litres of 85%-82% abv then suddenly took off towards 90 degrees. I collected a bit into the tails down to 60%abv (getting a strong taste of Molasses now and a faint smell of.. dunno is that lavendar? Probably 'mold-nil' ) and then switched to feints. Got about a litre of tails into the feints bottle.
I had a few shots before bedtime and put some oak chips in with the rest to age for a while.
But it's good to drink now. Doesn't smell like store-bought rum but it sure tastes like rum. Got a nice peppery bite to it too.
Hope this is of use to somebody.
