my first sbb

[mercmar]

first attempt at SBB rum.
5 gallons of molasses from webstaurant.com
Bills recipe was in liters and I had a 18 gallon hdpe barrel so multiplied. started with 5 gallons molasses, 51liters of water, a few vitamin b complex ground up, 9 red star packets. I have a nice drill mixer for aerating wine and went to town with that. OG was too high for my hydrometer, that should have been a warning.. plugged her up and waited.. 3 days later nothing. then I got to thinking this mash is thick as hell (because I wanted to use up all the 5 gallons of Blackstrap instead of listening to Bill but ran out of fermentor space. more sugar is good right?) I racked out 4 gallons into a 6g carboy of the thick stuff and topped off with 2 gallons of water. added water to the big fermenter as well. added 2 more red star packets each stirred up and boom the party started. 7 days later a little sweet. I followed the recipe and waited until it had no sweetness left. FG was 1.10 about day 12. all copper 10 gallon potstill i did 3 hard stripping runs without the thumper (I have an 80k btu blichman burner from home brewing beer so I could run hard). tossed the first 150 ml into my foreshots jar of each run and collected until 40 abv. I saved about 1 gallon of dunder from the last strip run to use in my thumper for the spirit run. I ended up with about 4 gallons of 110 proof which I cut down for the spirit run to 50 proof. I realized here I should have saved some wash for the thumper instead of dunder but I used dunder anyway. I was surprised by the molasses taste the final product had using dunder.

spirit run was run at about 2liter per hr it was a 6 hr run. average proof off the condenser was 160. collected into 12 oz jars. I bought 12 oz glass jars from uline. 36 x 12 oz jars were less then 50 bucks. after foreshots I ended up with about 340 oz before cuts. coffee filter and rubber bands over night. I make my wife do my cuts. she thinks I am turning into a hillbilly (compliment to me) but takes up her responsibility with zeal. first 100 oz are heads, 210 oz are hearts. only like 30 oz of tails but I kept 10 oz for nice tail flavor. ended up with 4.75 L @ 148 proof. I cut it to 57% (6.75 L) and added some toasted oak spiral things. 10 days later beautiful cinnamon note plus molasses. impossible not to drink. I am aging in a corny keg and I fish out my "tests" in 4 oz bottles.

To close out, for all of you who have shared information and knowledge on this forum, your contributions do not go unnoticed. You have given so many of us the information to excel in this endeavor, crafting products that surpass the products we can buy. people say there are so many choices on the shelves, why do it yourself, but I doubt their cuts, I doubt that they really cared about what made it in when the dollar was whispering to them..
The product i make i know it from stem to stern. So here's to all of you retired or not. I appreciate your knowledge, appreciate the craft, the risk (in some cases) and the result. (yes I have been sipping on my sbb rum)

[River Rat]

Mercmar,
I'm about to venture out of my usual grain routine and try rum for the first time, SBB Rum. Thanks for posting your experience. I could see myself deviating from the recipe to not "waste" ingredients I have on hand. After reading your post I will try to stick to the proven recipe as closely as possible. Just have to make sure I do my mathmaticals right converting units and recipe size. Glad yours turned out well!