Add nutrients to Rum or not
Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2023 6:15 am
Recently I’ve begun trying to keep my ferments as close to base products as possible and minimize ingredients to only what’s required, especially avoiding anything processed. To that end, I’ve removed all additives from my rum ferments (basically down to water, molasses, Panela, dunder and yeast) and have been happy with what seems to be a nicely flavored product. I felt ok with this as Molasses already contains a fairly significant amount of nitrogen and phosphate for the yeast as nutrients, but I wasn’t sure if it was enough. I began wondering a little more on if this is the right idea or not so I started digging into research and found a few things:
First it seems that nitrogen balance impacts ethanol creation and acetic acid formation, but phosphate doesn’t seem to have as big an impact. It also seems important to hit the perfect nutrient balance which goes against the theory “you can’t add too much” as having too much nutrient seems to reduce ethanol percentage and increase acetic acid.
Here’s the most detailed study I found: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2860142/
So then the question is, how much acetic acid do we want as it’s interaction with ethyl alcohol creates
Ethyl acetate which delivers fruity notes ( though some people perceive it as nail polish remover I understand).
I’ve found old Jamaican recipes that indicate the addition of vinegar to encourage more “flavor” and “heavy rum” as well.
So it seems like for those wanting a very clean rum, finding the perfect nutrient balance is very important. For those chasing “flavor” it seems better to either add no nutrients, or potentially even add too much or even some vinegar…
Curious if anyone has different experiences or thoughts on this topic?
First it seems that nitrogen balance impacts ethanol creation and acetic acid formation, but phosphate doesn’t seem to have as big an impact. It also seems important to hit the perfect nutrient balance which goes against the theory “you can’t add too much” as having too much nutrient seems to reduce ethanol percentage and increase acetic acid.
Here’s the most detailed study I found: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2860142/
So then the question is, how much acetic acid do we want as it’s interaction with ethyl alcohol creates
Ethyl acetate which delivers fruity notes ( though some people perceive it as nail polish remover I understand).
I’ve found old Jamaican recipes that indicate the addition of vinegar to encourage more “flavor” and “heavy rum” as well.
So it seems like for those wanting a very clean rum, finding the perfect nutrient balance is very important. For those chasing “flavor” it seems better to either add no nutrients, or potentially even add too much or even some vinegar…
Curious if anyone has different experiences or thoughts on this topic?