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anyone here know what the best way is to give my rum an amber color without giving added flavors?thanks.

Caramelize some sugar and mix it in a little at a time. Get it dark brown without getting to black. Taste first to make sure it doesn't taste burnt. It will add a little flavor, but not much.

Learning how to caramelize sugar isn't easy. I went through a bunch of sugar getting it down. It works great for rum. You'll like it.

Why? If you like the flavor. Who cares what color it is?

Panela is caramelized all ready.
So far 2oz per 750 seems good

so used to drinking palm breeze thought the color would be nice.also good to camouflage my liquor.will be in palm breeze bottles,might as well make it look like it.

also,can i color it w/carmalized sugar and then let it age?or do you do it before consuming?thanks again.

gazeuse wrote:also,can i color it w/carmalized sugar and then let it age?or do you do it before consuming?thanks again.

Yes you can let it age after coloring. Sounds like a nice project you got goin on.

LWTCS wrote:Panela is caramelized all ready.
So far 2oz per 750 seems good

Do you put it in as a solid...and it liqufies naturally? or melt it in a pot/pan?

Sugar does not dissolve/ liquify so good in alcohol. Best to liquify with heat first....IMO

"Best to liquify with heat first....IMO"
Id mix with some water first,if you heat and add it will turn to "candy"

Dnderhead wrote:"Best to liquify with heat first....IMO"
Id mix with some water first,if you heat and add it will turn to "candy"

Yes you do need a bit of water. Good catch on the candy

So, my small scale rum turned out really well. It came out to average around 45%, but it turned out to be a bit of work
trying to get it to taste more like rum than when it came out ...
My reading thru this forum and looking throughout the net found to be pretty much the same... add some caramalized sugar and you'll get the amber colour... Easier said than done... asking the wife to give me a small pot to cook up sugar didn't go over too well either....
I broke up some Panela and added about 2 ounces of the rum to it...made a nice slurr....poured it into a litre sized bottle, added about 3/4 of a split vanilla bean... and gave it a good shake.... let it sit overnight..and filtered it... light brown amber in colour.....lovely....simply lovely....
OMG>.......heaven on the tongue.... I drank it on the rocks last night...all night... no headache...no hangover....

A little bit similar to Sailor Jerry's.... but not really... if you see what I mean.... I''m so proud of it that I've got a new batch going with the dunder of this batch....

I know what you mean Grappa, I used 3 ounces of fresh dunder from my run to dissolve the panela and the results were very nice. I did add a few more ingredients to my spiced rum, and am looking forward to the results.

Bogey...
what other ingredients did you add for your spiced rum.... I'm thinking of going that route on the next batch...would love some ideas...

2 whole cloves, 1 Star Anise Pod, 2 Madagascar Figs, 4 Peppercorns, 1/2 cinnamon stick, 1 Vannila Bean, 3 Allspice Berries: to 8 mil of rum.

It's basically a variation of a recipe I saw somewhere on HD and the results so far are very promising. In fact it worked too quick, so I would add that total amount to about 24 mil of rum. I just filtered it now after one day because I think it was going to get too spicy. The clove and the anise worked quickly so I filtered and just kept the vanilla and the peppercorns to try to balance out the taste. I think a week of the two will give it the balance I am looking for.

Edit* It was a first gen panela, so with no dunder, but I kept 3 gallons of the fresh dunder for the next washes and spirit run.