I feel like this is the right place to record my ongoing experiments to try and find the perfect rum for our household, and the experiment is already underway so I want to get stuff written down so I can update it as time goes on.
Since I'm still fairly new to home distilling and even newer to distilling rum in specific, I decided I should start out by narrowing things down to precisely what I like before I start making enough to fill barrels for long term aging and enjoyment.
There are so many options of base fermentable for rum that I figure a bunch of small batches to test them all out is required. I decided on Buccaneer Bob's recipe from T&T for comparing the different types of molasses I have available to each other. The three types I have readily available are the Evolve deer attractant molasses from TSC, Golden Barrel blackstrap, and Golden Barrel supreme baking. The Evolve is the cheapest, especially when I can catch it on sale at TSC, but the Golden Barrel blackstrap is only a dollar or two more per gallon when I get it by the 5 gallon bucket after shipping, and the supreme baking the same again over the food grade blackstrap. I'm not really doing this to get the cheapest drink I can but the best after all. I went with BB because the sugar provides a bit of a safety net and lets me compare using a gallon per batch. I'm not doing anything with the dunder essence described in the pdf though I'll probably make and try it at some point just out of curiosity, I just liked the recipe as a baseline for comparison.
I also wanted to try all panela and all jaggery bases. I gave them the same boiled yeast and dunder mix as the gen3 BB I'm using to compare the different molasses to each other, though I may also go through and do a batch of each with no dunder to include in the comparison.
From these I'm hoping to narrow down which molasses I like best of the three, and which of the two unrefined sugars I like better.
I also put down a batch of SBB's all molasses using the same dunder as the rest, but according to his recipe. I used the Evolve molasses for this as it seemed the best comparison for all molasses vs molasses+sugar vs sugar-only, though once I decide on which molasses I like best in general I'll probably make another SBB using that molasses also.
I will also be making a best molasses + best unrefined sugar wash once I've made those base determinations.
For comparisons' sake I am using largely the same oak treatment for each one: one medium toasted (360F for a bit over 3 hours) oak stick per liter@62-65%, and another 250-500ml kept white. I'd like to find what I like best to drink as silver/white rum and aged.
I plan to try them at around 3 and 6 months at a minimum, hopefully 9 and 12 as well but we'll see how long it lasts
Here's a table of everything I've cooked up so far
| Method/Recipe | Fermentable | distilled? |
| SBB | Evolve | No |
| BB | Evolve | Yes |
| BB | GB Blackstrap | No |
| BB | GB Supreme Baking | No |
| BB-ish | Panela | Yes |
| BB-ish | Jaggery | Yes |