Home Distiller

Posted: **Tue Oct 12, 2010 12:44 pm**

I would like to start a new thread about my thoughts on rum, reaserch on rum, what I has seen commerical rum distilleries do and from what is sprinkled about on this forum.

To start, I would like to say I have tried several different recipes of rum (panela, brown sugar, molasses), recycled yeast, recycled dunder, used dunder with mold etc. I have also run a wash that have not cleared completely and found a thin layer of white, oily substance on top of the cooled dunder, which I reused. I have also tried several ingredients in aging my product. I know everyone says age for atleast a few weeks to a year but I have had excellent reviews (from someone than drinks Ron Zacapa 23, Cockspur, etc.) with a product that has only been sitting a few weeks on toasted oak chips, raisins, a dash of vanilla and some apple slices. That said, in order to work towards repeatability, towards creating a rum on par with the greats (Mount Gay in my mind is the pinnacle) and in the spirit of sharing our experiences and thoughts for the betterment of mankind (those that want to create a solid rum anyway), I present my theories on rum.

Creating The Rum Wash
First off, we all start with a wash. Here are my theories on what make a rum mash unique, which in my opinion, is the most difficult part of the process as most anyone can make cuts and blend to instruction. I am leaving out the type molasses purposely as they vary greatly in content/taste region to region. I make the assumption that all rum washs will contain some type of molasses. I also make the assumption the rum will developed through multiple generations.

Yeast
Most of us use distllers, bread, wine or beer yeast. I am not sure what species of yeast but I assume that most of them are some type of Saccharomyces strain, which is the most common species. Other brewing yeast include the Brettanomyces type, which is used for lambic style beers. For specifically rum, Rafael Arroyo recommends a strain of Schizosaccharomyces yeast. As far as I know, this yeast is not available retail and most commercial distilleries have developed a proprietry stain of this yeast either from a commerical source or from the wild yeast (Leblon Cachaca comes to mind). As far as recycling the yeast, the commerical distillers always have a culture growing in a medium nearly identical to the wash so it would not be neccessary to collect the yeast from the wash, which is what we would do in order to recycle.

Dunder
Dunder is critical to flavor profile in rum. From what i have seen, dunder must be allowed to develop some type of wild yeast and/or bacterial culture of Clostridium Saccharobutyricum in order to develop the heavier rum flavors as per Arroyo. While actively fermenting, the bacteria in the mash work in unison with the yeast strains to develop the rum flavors. Because alcohol is much more toxic to the bacteria than the yeast, that is why the distllers only aim for around 6-7 % in the wash. From what I understand, the wild yeast and bacteria from the dunder are overwhelmed by the more the faster growing mash yeast that is pitched and also because the pitched yeast can tolerate much more alcohol.

Stilling the Wash
Reading this forum, I found a thread that caught my attention. The process of letting the rum wash settle before charging the still was questioned because commercial rum producers would not have the time to let their wash settle before distilling so it might be beneficial to note that a rum wash might not neccesarily have to be crystal clear before running through your still. I have run a rum wash that had not fully settled and week later came back to a oil slick on my dunder. Are the rum oils Pugi raves about actually the lipids (oils) from the burst yeast?? Should we run the first wash with the yeast in it order to get a good backbone for the dunder at the expense of the quality of the distillate?? Could I just save the entire first batch of distillate and rerun with the second generation wash?? These are questions I intend to find out as I remember getting a especially good rum from the mash that used that oil slicked dunder not to mention a fast ferment.

Rum Cuts and Oils
Investigating rum oils, Rafael Arroyo mentioned that the rum was separated into four fractions as we usually do namely Foreshots > Heads > Hearts > Tails. Where we usually only keep the hearts cut to drink but for rum, Arroyo recommended adding a fifth cut between the hearts and tails and then combining the hearts and the tails, which contain the rum oils. Specifically, he mentioned collecting from 100 proof to 75 proof seperately (which contained undesirables) and then combining the distillate that followed, containing the rum oils, with the hearts cuts. He mentioned that the rum oils are more soluble in alcohol than in water, so alone, the rum oils may float to the top of the container but when combined with the hearts (high in alcohol) will dissolve. My theory here is that we would have to include some yeast in the boil to get a good supply of rum oils in the tails. I plan to test this as well as I must agree that at 30% or 60 proof, some of the best rum flavors are there.

I am looking for comments from the board about these theories and any experiences the members may have had. Hoping to spark some real indepth discussion around rum.

Posted: **Mon Oct 18, 2010 6:52 am**

So I ran my rum wash this weekend. I ran my wash with the yeast still active although most of the yeast had settled to the bottom of the fermenter, some small fizzing was visible. The recipe was just 4lbs panela, 10lbs brown sugar and 2 lbs of molasses made up to 30 liters including 10 liters of dunder from the previous run. The dunder was not fermented with any wild yeast or bacteria.

I made the cuts really basic after first 100 mls of foreshots were discarded. The cuts were as follows with the % being where the cut was made;

#1 = 1 liter of heads @ 83% ABV (very strong alchol smell with a molasse nose, very sharp taste)
#2 = 3.5 liters of hearts @ 60% ABV (rounder smell of molasses with a slight buttered bread, taste is the same)
#3 = 750 mls of pretails @ 40% ABV (cloudy, rum oils present, smell was pleasant and not sulphury, slight yeast, taste was molasse and buttery almost bitter)
#4 = 500 mls of tails @ 10% ABV (very cloudy, same as above smell, slighty more bitter taste but more rum and butter, and more yeasty but not overpowering)

Following the Arroyo patent and to taste the solubility of the rum oils I added cuts #2 to #4. The cloudiness present in #4 was not present in the mixture and was as clear as #2 was before.

Not noticing any off smells in the # 3 cuts I went ahead and combined # 3 with the mixture of #2 and #4. The mixture is really different from the heads in smell and taste being much more rounded with a really nice nose that is not like any other rum I have made before. I am very much looking forward to aging this rum on some oak.

I am not sure why Arroyo recommended separating cut number #3 from #2 and #4 but proably has to do with the ingredients in the wash and/or the yeast strain. Arroyo mentions a sulphur smell in the #3 cut but I did not detect any smells like that. I recall them using sulphuric acid to adjust the PH in the was so maybe that was the cause or maybe the yeast and/or bacteria strain produced some of those sulphur smells.

I will be fermenting some of my dunder so on my next run I will still make the same cuts just to be sure.

Posted: **Tue Oct 19, 2010 9:25 pm**

Creating The Rum Wash
First off, we all start with a wash. Here are my theories on what make a rum mash unique, which in my opinion, is the most difficult part of the process as most anyone can make cuts and blend to instruction.

Not sure I agree with that. Making the cuts is the most difficult part of stilling to learn, I think. That is where you have to do the most learning, and where experience counts the most.

Yeast

Specific yeast for rums is not something I have paid much attention to. I get a good result with the bakers yeast, but no doubt there are better strains out there.

Dunder
Dunder is critical to flavor profile in rum.

Agree.

From what i have seen, dunder must be allowed to develop some type of wild yeast and/or bacterial culture of Clostridium Saccharobutyricum in order to develop the heavier rum flavors as per Arroyo. While actively fermenting, the bacteria in the mash work in unison with the yeast strains to develop the rum flavors.

One alternative to that is to do it the way Liquid_Luv does, and mature the dunder in a dunder pit, then add it to the final spirit run, not the ferment.

Because alcohol is much more toxic to the bacteria than the yeast, that is why the distllers only aim for around 6-7 % in the wash.

Think they also aim for that level because it makes the ferment much faster, which saves time and increases overall production rate.

Stilling the Wash
Reading this forum, I found a thread that caught my attention. The process of letting the rum wash settle before charging the still was questioned because commercial rum producers would not have the time to let their wash settle before distilling so it might be beneficial to note that a rum wash might not neccesarily have to be crystal clear before running through your still. I have run a rum wash that had not fully settled and week later came back to a oil slick on my dunder. Are the rum oils Pugi raves about actually the lipids (oils) from the burst yeast??

Interesting question. According to Pugi's rum thread, he only waits a day before running the wash, so he may well still have a bunch of yeast in there.

Should we run the first wash with the yeast in it order to get a good backbone for the dunder at the expense of the quality of the distillate?? Could I just save the entire first batch of distillate and rerun with the second generation wash?? These are questions I intend to find out as I remember getting a especially good rum from the mash that used that oil slicked dunder not to mention a fast ferment.

Rum Cuts and Oils
Investigating rum oils, Rafael Arroyo mentioned that the rum was separated into four fractions as we usually do namely Foreshots > Heads > Hearts > Tails. Where we usually only keep the hearts cut to drink but for rum, Arroyo recommended adding a fifth cut between the hearts and tails and then combining the hearts and the tails, which contain the rum oils. Specifically, he mentioned collecting from 100 proof to 75 proof seperately (which contained undesirables) and then combining the distillate that followed, containing the rum oils, with the hearts cuts. He mentioned that the rum oils are more soluble in alcohol than in water, so alone, the rum oils may float to the top of the container but when combined with the hearts (high in alcohol) will dissolve. My theory here is that we would have to include some yeast in the boil to get a good supply of rum oils in the tails. I plan to test this as well as I must agree that at 30% or 60 proof, some of the best rum flavors are there.

Look forward to your results.

Cheers

Posted: **Mon Oct 25, 2010 2:01 pm**

Hookline,

I am not sure that mixing all the tails was the right thing to do. Although the cloudiness of the tails did disappear when added to the hearts cut, and although the smell did change for the better, the taste is still slightly bitter although its only been two weeks now. The gallon of 63 % i have left is going into long term storage. maybe Xmas Ill break out a bottle or so and sample then. Maybe because I am using bread yeast or maybe because I stressed the yeast trying for a high ABV on my wash. I am going to retry this experiment once again with another wash that only had a 7.5% ABV potential.

On a side note, I am done trying for high ABV washs. My SG on my last wash was 1.055 Friday night when the yeast was pitched. Saturday afternoon, the gravity was at 1.020, Sunday afternoon 1.010 and today the gravity this morning was 1.000. Three days to dry. My previous wash took nearly three weeks to dry with SG of 1.100.

So I found a interesting recipe on the web for a rum mash. The funniest thing is that it calls for apples and banana skins (not the banana, just the skin) of all things. Researching banana peels show that they contain a heap of mineral and vitamins so it maybe included for yeast nutrition as well as flavor compounds. The recipe also includes molasses and sugar. It was supposedly from a jamaican distiller that immigrated. Now I have tried a rum wash that had about 3 liters of apple juice added (the cloudy type that settles) and it had a wonderful nose to it when distilled.

I think I am going to try the banana peel/apple on my next wash. As they say, nothing tried, nothing done.

Posted: **Mon Oct 25, 2010 11:52 pm**

Very interesting in regards to the banana skins, let us know how you go with that and I might have to try it

I never would have thought of adding them.

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 8:08 am**

CaymanRumBaron wrote:
So I found a interesting recipe on the web for a rum mash. The funniest thing is that it calls for apples and banana skins (not the banana, just the skin) of all things. Researching banana peels show that they contain a heap of mineral and vitamins so it maybe included for yeast nutrition as well as flavor compounds. The recipe also includes molasses and sugar. It was supposedly from a jamaican distiller that immigrated. Now I have tried a rum wash that had about 3 liters of apple juice added (the cloudy type that settles) and it had a wonderful nose to it when distilled.

Funny thing... apples don't grow in Jamaica.

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 10:12 am**

That is odd.
One might think tamrinds before apples by a long shot.

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 10:34 am**

Was curious, so I oogled -

http://www.jamaicans.com/cooking/foods/ ... sary.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Note the Otaheite apple, also known as the

http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/malay_apple.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Cheers,

bd.

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 12:26 pm**

Funny thing... apples don't grow in Jamaica.

But they are available in the stores. Those otoeaty apples are good eating though. They have a faint perfumed aroma to them.

Tamarind does have a strong acidic taste. Just thinking about tamarind rolled in brown sugar makes my mouth water. Not so sure they would work in rum though. Too many tamarinds strips your tongue.

The apples and banana thing is just a side project as I am convinced that jamaican style rum can be had by fermenting the dunder with a wild yeast/bacteria combo, combining it with a molasses based wash and then pitching a quality commercial rum yeast like Danstil 493, after all we want alcohol, not just esters. I am following Kiwi as he cultures some of the 493 he got from another member on here. Anybody else got some rum wash fermenting with the Danstil 493?

Bear in mind that the caribbean distillers only ferment to 5% to 7% ABV to allow the bacteria to thrive alongside the yeast. Actually the yeast and bacteria are "engineered" to work in a symbiosis and not kill each other off. I have heard the hardest thing is balance the populations of both so that both ester yields and alcohol yields are maximized.

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 12:33 pm**

I have heard the hardest thing is balance the populations of both so that both ester yields and alcohol yields are maximized.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering about too. I guess one solution is low abv and fast fermentation, that way both get what they need and neither dominates the other. Although I wonder if the bacteria component is thriving on a different substrate than the yeast are, in which case they would be symbiotic and not in competition for the same food source. bd.

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 12:58 pm**

blind drunk wrote:Was curious, so I oogled -

http://www.jamaicans.com/cooking/foods/ ... sary.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Note the Otaheite apple, also known as the

http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/malay_apple.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Cheers,

bd.

A wonderful tool that Googles is

...however named, the Otaheite Apple isn't a true apple, least not as most folks know apples... they do not look or taste anything like the apples the whole world uses in apple juice, pies, or sauce. Using apple juice to ferment for the use in spirits is good stuff, but it doesn't make rum.

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:00 pm**

On the dunder side, the wild yeast and bacteria seem to be able to access the sugars from molasses that the regular yeast (bakers atleast) can not. Bacteria also feeds on the yeast proteins. Makes me think the bacteria is atleast capable of consuming the dead yeast from the ferment and in Arroyos patent, he specifies that that yeast and bacteria should be able to metabolize each others waste products (except alcohol as that would hurt yields) as to work together.

I have a certain situation happening right now. I left the dunder from my last distillation in my SS boiler. Took the column off to take 10 liters of the fresh dunder to add to another ferment but left the top off. That was 2 weeks ago. Took a look in there last night and it has some huge yeast bubbles in there and a very lovely aroma, much different than fresh dunder, which smells funky to me. Shoke it up and it was fizzing like pepsi. So the dunder in my boiler is fermenting actively with the wild stuff.

Now the rum I collected from the wash thats the dunder in the boiler is not really aging how I anticipated as I added the tails to hearts as i said above, still very bitter and tailsy almost three weeks later on oak. I am thinking I should just pour it back into the boiler with the fermented dunder, along with the liter of heads as well as a liter of tails i had from a previous run and just have another go.

I will collect a liter jar of the dunder in the boiler in its present state as to preserve as a seed for my real dunder pit and I have already collected some dunder before the current fermentation took off in some small jars and those are fermenting as well on thier own. I will prolly will let the dunder in the boiler work its magic for a few more days then on the weekend do the run. I have a wash fermented with non-fermented dunder that I need to run as it finished Monday. The dunder from that run will becom the first deposit to my dunder pit and I will seed it with the dunder in jars collected previously.

What do you guys think?

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:05 pm**

Liquid,

Fermenting apple juice makes cider and distilling that makes apple brandy. I am only suggesting using a few apples in a molasses wash to see what comes across in the distillation. I have added a few liters of apple juice to a rum wash and really liked what the distillate smelt like. It had some of the same notes that the fermented dunder has, which is what piqued my interest in using apples in the wash.

Anybody else notice any similarities smell wise in a apple cider brandy/wash to dunder?

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:07 pm**

CaymanRumBaron wrote:
Funny thing... apples don't grow in Jamaica.
But they are available in the stores. Those otoeaty apples are good eating though. They have a faint perfumed aroma to them.

Not in most stores... Real apples are not native to the land (Real Apples, Otaheite apples are not really an apple as most folks know apples to be, they are exotic tropical fruits with no taste similarity to an apple), therefore not available to most people in a poor country... these would certainly not be used in rum.

Prove me wrong, and I'll be the first to issue a written apology.

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:23 pm**

CaymanRumBaron wrote:Liquid,

Fermenting apple juice makes cider and distilling that makes apple brandy. I am only suggesting using a few apples in a molasses wash to see what comes across in the distillation. I have added a few liters of apple juice to a rum wash and really liked what the distillate smelt like. It had some of the same notes that the fermented dunder has, which is what piqued my interest in using apples in the wash.

Anybody else notice any similarities smell wise in a apple cider brandy/wash to dunder?

CRB, with all due respect, not trying to give you a hard time... just my point being, are we just talking about making good booze in general

... or are we talking about rum?
I agree with you 100% good apples make good apple brandy... and I do like it ...just IMHO... it doesn't belong in rum

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:24 pm**

I have a certain situation happening right now. I left the dunder from my last distillation in my SS boiler. Took the column off to take 10 liters of the fresh dunder to add to another ferment but left the top off. That was 2 weeks ago. Took a look in there last night and it has some huge yeast bubbles in there and a very lovely aroma, much different than fresh dunder, which smells funky to me. Shoke it up and it was fizzing like pepsi. So the dunder in my boiler is fermenting actively with the wild stuff.

That happened to me too, but not in the boiler, in the pit. I thought that maybe it was some kinda bacterial fermentation, which would be cool. Difference is, mine stunk

Well at least to me it did, my wife thought it smelled like fruit

bd.

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:53 pm**

Liquid,

First off, Jamaica is not that poor. Not every one lives in shacks in the hills and walks barefoot on the road. Even one I know there have cars, cell phones, internet, college educatation etc. Quite a good percentage of the population have relatively good paying jobs plus they have hundreds of resorts, thousands of condos which cater to the millions of toursists that come each year which means demand and by simple economics, somebody on island has to supply them apples.

Lets just leave it at > if somebody with a job wanted a few apples, they could could get some. If a huge distillery like Appleton wanted a few apples, they could get some from somewhere, not saying that they do.

Google "Super Plus Food Stores Jamaica", check out the produce section and then write me that apology.

I know using anything else but sugar cane sourced materials is not considered a "true" rum to the purists so is the addition of fruit and spice, in any amount, depending on where you are in the rum making world. As for making a good heavy rum amatuer style (with what you have), I want to try different things and call my own, just prolly cant call it rum.

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 2:02 pm**

Difference is, mine stunk Well at least to me it did, my wife thought it smelled like fruit

First time I drank beer, it tasted nasty too, still drinking it though.

The wifefy was probably closer to truth.

My dunder is very sweet smelling right now just like how a molasses wash smells before its fermented which is what I always wish my rum tasted like

.

Posted: **Wed Oct 27, 2010 5:20 pm**

CaymanRumBaron wrote:Liquid,

Lets just leave it at > if somebody with a job wanted a few apples, they could could get some. If a huge distillery like Appleton wanted a few apples, they could get some from somewhere, not saying that they do.

Google "Super Plus Food Stores Jamaica", check out the produce section and then write me that apology.

On that note, I stand corrected

I most humbly apologize

CaymanRumBaron wrote:I know using anything else but sugar cane sourced materials is not considered a "true" rum to the purists so is the addition of fruit and spice, in any amount, depending on where you are in the rum making world. As for making a good heavy rum amatuer style (with what you have), I want to try different things and call my own, just prolly cant call it rum.

...and thank you for this acknowledgement

Posted: **Tue Nov 02, 2010 12:34 pm**

So to update;

I took the fermenting dunder in the boiler and combined it with the lees from the last ferment.

I then put 15 liters of that into a new fermenter with;
6 lbs of panela
2 lbs fancy molasses
4 centrum mutivitamins
1 teaspoon of epsom salts
Water made up to 30 liters total

Initial SG is 1.050 on 10/30/10.
Todays gravity is 1.020 on 11/02/10

The logic behind using a mixture is that wild yeast/bacteria alone might not be able handle even 7.5% ABV so the bread yeast will be able to push the fermentation to dry in the likely event the wild yeast/bacteria are killed by the alcohol. I would think a slower fermentation would be preferable as it would give the wild stuff a chance to produce the esters we are looking for before being subdued by the alcohol produced by the bread yeast.

I did notice something when I opened it to check the gravity. It had some large CO2 bubbles coming up along with the normal micro sized ones.
The larges ones were > o
The small ones were > .

I have never seen this before in any of the past ferments but it leads me to think that the larger bubbles are from the wild yeast/bacteria fermenting.
Any one else notice this? Other than the bubbles, the wash is much sweeter smelling (smells like the fermenting dunder) than the usual bread yeast only wash, which is usually smelling sour near the end of fermentation.

Posted: **Mon Nov 08, 2010 9:11 am**

Ok,

So I stilled the mash. I collected in 13 small glass 350 ml bottles. Started collecting at 75% and stopped and 10%.

The differences versus a normal wash (not using any wild cultures) are the following;

The first reading of the hydrometer was alot lower than normal; around 10% less ABV. The heads of the run is slightly more floral, more perfume, more sweet smelling. The hearts of the run is much different than normal, molasses is very evident in the nose, pretty much a mix of the floral heads and the more yeasty tails. The 3rd to last bottle of milky tails smells less yeasty than normal and is much smoother tasting than the normal wash and has quite a bit of flavors in there. I am detecting slight banana, a smokey flavor as well as cloves. In the normal tails, it would just be bitter, yeasty and harsh.

I am thinking about blending the 5 middle bottles (with the molasses profile) with half of the milky tails bottle and half of first bottle of heads, which is very floral and sweet.

I will probably use less oak chips than normal as to preserve the current profile as much as possible. This ones a keeper for sure and cant want to age it a few weeks.

I am now convinced that wild cultures (compared to bakers yeast alone atleast) can add much complexity to the profile of the rum even when combined bakers yeast and look forward to keeping this going for as much generations as possible. This is the closest my distillate has come to smelling like the wash. I am expecting to get some Danstil EDV 493 (see Kiwis thread about breeding this strain) this week so I will be comparing the two shortly.

Posted: **Mon Nov 08, 2010 10:33 am**

Great result CRB, very encouraging and exciting. Thanks, bd.

Posted: **Mon Nov 08, 2010 12:57 pm**

BD, you very welcome, glad to be able to share my success with like minded people. Just a shame I cant let you sample it

The overall yield volume wise was the same as usual but was lower in ABV%. I noticed this from the beginning with a much lower starting ABV% of the run. I guess this is because the wild cultures converted more of the sugar to higher boiling point materials. I have read about this as someone on here had noticed this before as well using fermenting dunder.

Also during the run, I noticed that the ABV dropped very slowly after 75% and then began to drop quickly after the 50% mark. I still have the bottles airing out so I am going to check the ABV on each and see exactly what the curve was like and post the results.

Posted: **Mon Nov 08, 2010 1:23 pm**

I was just in my shed setting up the rig to run my dunder pit rum when my wife rolled up in her car, 3 hours early. Plans foiled. Bummer.

bd.

Posted: **Mon Nov 08, 2010 1:41 pm**

Well the silver lining is alteast the dunder will ripen a little more.

Just curious, BD, whats your wash made from?

Posted: **Mon Nov 08, 2010 4:05 pm**

Good thing for silver linings!

My recipe is a simple mix of blackstrap, cane sugar, vitamins, dap and baker's yeast, made with 25% ripened dunder and water. ABV 8% or so. I may cut back on the blackstrap in the future and go with more cane sugar.

bd.

Posted: **Mon Nov 08, 2010 8:05 pm**

Im learning simple is best when it comes to spirits. My washes are around the same ABV as yours and minus the dap and sub the blackstrap for fancy. I add centrums for nutrients and thats it. 3 days to a week tops and its dry and settled. Hearts are smooth as glass.

Posted: **Mon Nov 08, 2010 8:37 pm**

I guess I don't need the dap, but I do use the centrums too. Last one took two weeks, but I think it was the temp and maybe the wash was too acidic. Once I added some baking soda, it really took off and kept going. I have a bucket left of the blackstrap and I was thinking of the fancy, if I can get it wholesale from one of my suppliers. I'm finding the rum quite forgiving and drinkable pretty soon after running the wash. Not so many edges and a bigger, drinkable yield

Posted: **Tue Nov 09, 2010 7:19 am**

Yep drinkable right off the still is about right. I am contemplating keeping a single bottle white as it really smells like molasses.

I was wondering about that PH, seems like after a few generations the wash gets slower and sour slightly . Is sodium bicarbonate work the same as calcium carbonate as I think one is the better buffer. I have plenty of limestone rock (the whole island is limestone). I was thinking I could just crush a little piece to powder, boil it in a little water, let it dry out, repowder it and chuck in the wash.

On the aging front, since I use oak chips in glass with the occasional raisins/fruit, i think i want to be able to remove the raisins/fruit after a while. Have you ever left fruit inside your aging vessel too long? I have a bottle of rum with some oak raisins and apple and it smells great but tastes like it did right off the still, very harsh and stingy and has been aging almost 5 weeks. my other bottle of week old rum with nothing but oak chips tastes much more smooth.

I think the fruit initially soaks up some of the bad stuff and replaces them with the fruit sugars but if you dont remove them its just the same if you didnt add them, prolly worse. My opinion of course, I dont know if anyone has aged long term with fruit in their rum successfully.

Posted: **Tue Nov 09, 2010 7:34 am**

Last one took two weeks, but I think it was the temp and maybe the wash was too acidic.

My washs are always in the 80's, all times of day. One of the benefits of living on a tropical island. But its been dropping into the 70's (winter for us) lately and i have noticed the washes slow a good bit.

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