What is the objective of this recipe
The main objective of this recipe is to create a Jamaican style rum, with a lot of esters, but easily replicable for us home distillers. So, we are not going to use cousin’s process or double retort still or any other hard to find ingredient for home distillers (such as fresh cane juice to turn into cane acid). This recipe is based on informations from "Modern Caribbean Rum" by Matt PIetrek & Carrie Smith.
Caveat
To boost the ester count, we will make a wash quite acidic, using cane vinegar. The more acidic the wash is, the more esters are produced, but the less alcohol is left at the end of fermentation. So, it is a low yield recipe. To give you a rough estimate, I usually produced around 3L of 60ABV rum (after reduction with water) by batch of classic rum recipe. This recipe produces between 1/2 or 1/3 of that, so between 1L and 1.5L of final product.
Moreover, this recipe will highly depend of the type of yeast you are using: you will need a high resistance yeast, but you will have to adapt the recipe to match your yeast. The goal is to create a hard environment for the yeast to slow the fermentation and thus have a very long fermenting time to create more esters. If your wash is not acidic enough, it will ferment to fast and you’ll lose esters. If your wash is too acidic, the fermentation will not start. So, you will need to tweak the recipe to find the sweet spot for your yeast.
Ingredient for a 27L wash
- High resistance yeast (2-3x the recommended standard pitching rate by the brand)
- 9kg (or 6-7L) of molasses
- 10-12L of dunder from previous distillation
- 1-2L of sugar cane vinegar
- Water to fill the rest of your tank
- Yeast nutrients (follow your band instructions for quantity)
- Opt : Oyster shells to reduce the acidity of the wash if needed
- Opt : Feints from previous batch of this recipe
Yeast: I can recommend kveik yeast, but high resistance distiller yeast should work. You also should use a high ester producing yeast, after all our goal is to boost the esters of the final product. We double or triple the recommended dose to help this very high gravity fermentation to start. If your brand recommends a high gravity pitching rate, you could try this first and add more yeast if needed later
Dunder: The more generation of this recipe you make, the more flavors the dunder will carry in the next batch. So if your first batch ferment a bit to quick, keep the dunder, maybe adding a bit more vinegar, and the next batch should be even better.
Vinegar: Vinegar contains acetic acid that will react with alcohol to create esters. You could technically use other vinegar than sugar cane vinegar.
Oyster shells: only needed if you wash stall or doesn’t ferment. It should reduce the acidity.
Pour every ingredients (except feints and oyster shells) into your fermenter and keep it at the right temperature for your yeast.
Fermentation:
If the fermentation starts normally, fantastic, don’t touch anything. The goal is to reach 2-3 weeks of fermentation. If ends too quickly, don’t worry, keep the dunder and next time boost a little bit the quantity of vinegar and dunder in the next batch to extend the fermentation time
If the fermentation does not start : first wait a little bit, if after 2 days there is no sign of activity, you can adjust your wash. First, try adding more yeast. You can even make a starter to create more yeast cells before adding it to the wash. Then try adding oyster shells, maybe the PH is too acidic for your yeast. If nothing work you can then try to add more water to dilute your wash a bit and create a more viable environment for your yeast.
Distillation:
Nothing special. A quick and hot stripping run, followed by a very slow spirit run. I recommend to discard a larger amount of foreshots than usual, because we will use some of the heads in the final cuts, so better be more careful. I usually discard 50-75ml for a standard rum recipe, with this one I discard 100-150ml of foreshots.
If you have feints from previous batch of this recipe: add the tails to the stripping run with your wash, and add the heads with the spirit run.
Collect in very small vessels. This recipe produces less alcohol than what you are maybe used to, so do smaller fractions.
Cuts:
A lot of the interesting esters will be in the head with this recipe (similar to some apple brandy recipe). Especially those notes of paint and varnish you can typically found in high esters rum from Hampden or Long pond distilleries. So additionally, to the hearts, I keep approximately 50-75% of the heads.
If you plan to drink it unaged, cut before the early tails. But if you plan to age it, you can also use the early tails: they are a bit rough unaged, but very interesting flavors are still present in it. Aging it will mellow its rough edges.
Next Batch
For the next batch, save the dunder of your first batch. If the acidity was right, you shouldn't need to add anymore vinegar. If it fermented to quickly, add a little more dunder and more vinegar this time until you find the sweet spot for your yeasts
The main objective of this recipe is to create a Jamaican style rum, with a lot of esters, but easily replicable for us home distillers. So, we are not going to use cousin’s process or double retort still or any other hard to find ingredient for home distillers (such as fresh cane juice to turn into cane acid). This recipe is based on informations from "Modern Caribbean Rum" by Matt PIetrek & Carrie Smith.
Caveat
To boost the ester count, we will make a wash quite acidic, using cane vinegar. The more acidic the wash is, the more esters are produced, but the less alcohol is left at the end of fermentation. So, it is a low yield recipe. To give you a rough estimate, I usually produced around 3L of 60ABV rum (after reduction with water) by batch of classic rum recipe. This recipe produces between 1/2 or 1/3 of that, so between 1L and 1.5L of final product.
Moreover, this recipe will highly depend of the type of yeast you are using: you will need a high resistance yeast, but you will have to adapt the recipe to match your yeast. The goal is to create a hard environment for the yeast to slow the fermentation and thus have a very long fermenting time to create more esters. If your wash is not acidic enough, it will ferment to fast and you’ll lose esters. If your wash is too acidic, the fermentation will not start. So, you will need to tweak the recipe to find the sweet spot for your yeast.
Ingredient for a 27L wash
- High resistance yeast (2-3x the recommended standard pitching rate by the brand)
- 9kg (or 6-7L) of molasses
- 10-12L of dunder from previous distillation
- 1-2L of sugar cane vinegar
- Water to fill the rest of your tank
- Yeast nutrients (follow your band instructions for quantity)
- Opt : Oyster shells to reduce the acidity of the wash if needed
- Opt : Feints from previous batch of this recipe
Yeast: I can recommend kveik yeast, but high resistance distiller yeast should work. You also should use a high ester producing yeast, after all our goal is to boost the esters of the final product. We double or triple the recommended dose to help this very high gravity fermentation to start. If your brand recommends a high gravity pitching rate, you could try this first and add more yeast if needed later
Dunder: The more generation of this recipe you make, the more flavors the dunder will carry in the next batch. So if your first batch ferment a bit to quick, keep the dunder, maybe adding a bit more vinegar, and the next batch should be even better.
Vinegar: Vinegar contains acetic acid that will react with alcohol to create esters. You could technically use other vinegar than sugar cane vinegar.
Oyster shells: only needed if you wash stall or doesn’t ferment. It should reduce the acidity.
Pour every ingredients (except feints and oyster shells) into your fermenter and keep it at the right temperature for your yeast.
Fermentation:
If the fermentation starts normally, fantastic, don’t touch anything. The goal is to reach 2-3 weeks of fermentation. If ends too quickly, don’t worry, keep the dunder and next time boost a little bit the quantity of vinegar and dunder in the next batch to extend the fermentation time
If the fermentation does not start : first wait a little bit, if after 2 days there is no sign of activity, you can adjust your wash. First, try adding more yeast. You can even make a starter to create more yeast cells before adding it to the wash. Then try adding oyster shells, maybe the PH is too acidic for your yeast. If nothing work you can then try to add more water to dilute your wash a bit and create a more viable environment for your yeast.
Distillation:
Nothing special. A quick and hot stripping run, followed by a very slow spirit run. I recommend to discard a larger amount of foreshots than usual, because we will use some of the heads in the final cuts, so better be more careful. I usually discard 50-75ml for a standard rum recipe, with this one I discard 100-150ml of foreshots.
If you have feints from previous batch of this recipe: add the tails to the stripping run with your wash, and add the heads with the spirit run.
Collect in very small vessels. This recipe produces less alcohol than what you are maybe used to, so do smaller fractions.
Cuts:
A lot of the interesting esters will be in the head with this recipe (similar to some apple brandy recipe). Especially those notes of paint and varnish you can typically found in high esters rum from Hampden or Long pond distilleries. So additionally, to the hearts, I keep approximately 50-75% of the heads.
If you plan to drink it unaged, cut before the early tails. But if you plan to age it, you can also use the early tails: they are a bit rough unaged, but very interesting flavors are still present in it. Aging it will mellow its rough edges.
Next Batch
For the next batch, save the dunder of your first batch. If the acidity was right, you shouldn't need to add anymore vinegar. If it fermented to quickly, add a little more dunder and more vinegar this time until you find the sweet spot for your yeasts
