Questions about a YouTube rum video

[Steve Broady]

My rice and I were watching a cooking video tonight, and the subject was making a pizza rum.
[utube][/utube]

I’m not going to ask about pizza rum, specifically. But more generally, I have questions. As I understand it, the rum distillery in London is taking an imported rum at 55% (they show a copper pot still with a double thumper, but I don’t know if that’s just generic footage or their actual supplier) and adding various botanicals to make a spiced rum.

I don’t know how spiced rum is normally made, so maybe that’s the usual, maybe that’s a variation on gin technique. I can’t say, though I’d be happy to learn. Spiced rum isn’t high on my priority list, either for making or drinking. Yet..

My question is, they show the small batch distillation of the spiced rum, and very specifically discuss taking a heads and tails cut. That seems odd to me. You don’t normally have a heads and tails cut on gin, because you’re starting with a pretty clean neutral to begin with. Why would they make cuts on rum? Is the rum they’re starting with cut wide for aging, and they’re cleaning it up for drinking white?

I don’t expect anyone to know this specific distillery, obviously, but I’m hoping someone can give me some insight into the logic behind what’s going on. I’m trying to learn.

[Dougmatt]

I don’t know how spiced rum is normally made, so maybe that’s the usual, maybe that’s a variation on gin technique. I can’t say, though I’d be happy to learn. Spiced rum isn’t high on my priority list, either for making or drinking..

My question is, they show the small batch distillation of the spiced rum, and very specifically discuss taking a heads and tails cut. That seems odd to me. You don’t normally have a heads and tails cut on gin, because you’re starting with a pretty clean neutral to begin with. Why would they make cuts on rum? Is the rum they’re starting with cut wide for aging, and they’re cleaning it up for drinking white?

I don’t expect anyone to know this specific distillery, obviously, but I’m hoping someone can give me some insight into the logic behind what’s going on. I’m trying to learn.

I went to a Gin Distillery in London for a corporate gin making event and it was basically the exact same setup. Here’s my thoughts on this.

Making spiced rum - the recipes I’ve seen and tried do not re-distill. This is the exact same process and equipment used in the gin making class I went to including cuts and keep to the ML (even down to the plastic hoses). I don’t know if commercial guys redistill or not, but I may try to run some of mine through the still and see if I like it better and what carries over.

Cuts - couple of thoughts here:

1) if it’s rum and not GNS then there are likely still some heads in there. Even with GNS a very small fraction could be heads or even more depending on who did the cuts and run of the GNS
2) when distilling after infusion I find the first little bit (ie the 20mls) that comes over is usually harsh, bitter, strong or just blech so I always catch it even when making gin and can’t remember ever adding it back though sometimes I will add some from the tails side where the cut “should have” been. OEG also has you also do this heads side cut, which I think these “programs” modeled after (or vice versa)
3) the program is designed to make a product that the “newbie” can taste right there, and take home to enjoy relatively immediately and do so repeatedly without making it “hard” so they’ve built the cuts to ensure they eliminate errors and the person leaves with a nice spirit, ready to drink soon.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Hopefully someone knows whether the commercial guys redistill. If I have time, I will break out the airstill and do the spiced rum I made and share them both.

[Steve Broady]

I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts (or even taste the results of) infusion vs. redistillation.

I’m familiar with the small “heads” cut on things like OEG, but what was described in the video was very explicitly a proper heads cut, removing acetone and other nasties. Basically, what the guy was saying seemed perfectly reasonable (and I don’t even think he mentioned methanol, which was nice… though I was drinking at that point myself, so maybe I missed it), it just struck me as odd to be making those cuts on what was presumably already a presentable white rum.

[NZChris]

Those cuts were done by newbies doing OEG style experiments so don't take much notice of them.

I quite often return the foreshot to the collection jug when doing this type of experiment. Taste it.

Heads and foreshots are arbitrary cuts made by distillers for whatever reasons they feel are necessary. Removing them may rob the heart cut of valuable flavor if you get it wrong.

Yes, one of them did mention methanol in the foreshot, which is known to be a myth.

[NZChris]

I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts (or even taste the results of) infusion vs. redistillation.

Try both. I've had success with both methods, sometimes when creating one product.

[NZChris]

I just remembered that Absinthe uses both distillation and infusion, so I've successfully combined both methods every year for quite a few years.