Home Distiller

I have been lurking on this board for the last year and this is my first post. We set-up our new organic certified distillery alongside our sugar mill in Paraguay, South America. We have been 'messing around' with our rums the last year trying to perfect our processes (mostly through trial and error) while we have focused on our organic gins.

Now its time for me to focus on improving our rums. Let me start by saying that I am not a chemist, an engineer, a master distiller or anything of the sort. I am just a guy chasing a crazy dream with some lifelong buddies and we've screwed-up and done a few things right somehow to get us going. I would like to humbly ask that the much more knowlegeable and experienced folks who constitute the membership of this board give our current process a review to give me feedback / ideas on how we may do anything different.

We run a 2000 liter copper pot with a 700 liter copper thumper with a dephlegmator and condensing column. Our system is heated with steam produced by a boiler fired with our own sugar cane bagasse. We ferment our own molasses that we produce at our adjacent sugar mill in a bank of 2000 liter conical stainless steel fermenters and here is our process. Our goal is to make a 'Jamaican style" heavy bodies and really flavorful rum. To date, our rums have been absolutely drinkable, but a little "dry" and not very complex in flavor.

- we dilute our own organic molasses that we produce at our adjacent sugar mill (while technical blackstrap, it is very sweet at 85+ BRIX). We dilute with treated vinasse water (more on that below)

- we add circa 200 liters of pot stillage / backset from the previous pot distilation.

- we also add about 200 liters of untreated vinasse that has sat in our ponds for months (really funky stuff...akin to 'infected dunder' that smells like vomit)

- we dilute to about 22 BRIX and ferment for 5 to 6 days usually (temperature controlled at 28 Celsius)

- once the fermentation has ceased, typically have 8-10% in our wash. At that point we add about 200 liters of freshly squeezed cane juice and let it sit for an additional 3 or 4 days

- recently, we added one last step to help increase the esterification of our fermentation. We added 30 liters of cane vinegar and about 1 ml of sulfuric acid.

A quick background on what "treated vinasse water" is... We have a continuous column at our distillery that we produce 95% ABV 'light rum' with. We produce about 7500 liters of light rum per day there and over 100,000 liters of stillage (vinasse). We have a system to treat that vinasse to seperate the solids from the liquids. We collect the solids in a rolling drum seperator and use them as organic fertilizer inputs for our fields. The liquid we discharge into holding ponds on our site. After some experimenting, we decided to try using this liquid to dilute our molasses for fermentation, with the goal being to help improve the final taste of our rums and to add more robust flavors through higher ester counts in the rums

Thank you all!

Someone else will probably post but our discusstion here is limited to boilers 30 gallons and under for home distilling use. See rules 10 & 11. SOunds awesome thoug!

https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtop ... =35&t=5090

Rules 10 & 11
10 It is the hope of this forum to promote the legalization of hobby distilling here in the United States. One of our goals is to prove that quality products can be created safely by the home distiller for personal use. Any discussion of selling, bartering or trading any distilled liquor unless by a licensed distillery will not tolerated. Such posts will be edited, deleted or locked, and the poster removed from this site. #
11 In our view 30 gallons and under is considered hobby size. Do not bring anything larger than this to our site. Legal distillers can talk about larger boilers in the Craft Distiller forums. #

Cheers,
j

You might want to try the American Distilling Institute's boards, though. That's where the pros hang out.

https://adiforums.com/

If I understand you correctly, it sounds like you are on the right path.

My first thought is let the rum sleep for a few years. Dont be impatient.
Of course much of this strategy has to do with being well capitalized.

One of the major flaws here in the states is that the domestically produced rums simply have not had enough time to round out. A symptom of being poorly capitalized or ignorance.

Good luck moving forward.

Uncle B wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 4:19 pm You might want to try the American Distilling Institute's boards, though. That's where the pros hang out.

https://adiforums.com/

Thank you! I'll check it out ...