Rum!
Hello all, with the end of the summer right around the corner I've been busy with getting the kids ready for a new school year, the inevitable busy September at work, and learning definitively how not to make apple cider (that's another post that I'll be making as soon as I've dealt with my experience and am able to speak of it in positive, or at least objective, terms).
In the meantime, lets talk rum.
If you're starting out distilling, rum is one easy to make but deceptively difficult to master. To be honest, all you need is some sugar, molasses, yeast, nutrient, and a plastic primary fermenter. Simple, right? Yes!
Where the difficulty lays is developing a distilled product with the depth of taste that you can get from a good store-bought rum but lacks in your home made product. More on that in a later post though, let's just get you going for now.
First of all, let's start with a recipe. I find the following works well for me, as the ingredients are easily acquired and to me simpler is better.
Mix all of it up in a properly sanitized primary fermenter, cover it with a towel for a couple days for your yeast colony to build, then seal it with the lid/airlock. After a couple weeks, or when your airlock stops bubbling you're ready to distill.
Sounds easy, and it is to be sure. And you'll get a pretty good product out of it, but there's some nuances that I've learned about the 6 or so times I've worked with this recipe.
The first is the molasses. You can do some reading about molasses and realize that the different grades have different taste, but also that each contains a different percentage of sugar. First extraction molasses (like table molasses) has a higher percentage, whereas livestock feed grade has much lower level of sugar.
* A note about livestock feed molasses. It can be bought at your local livestock feed or farm stores for a really good price. Like $30CDN for a 20kg bucket. Far cheaper than you'd be buying table or black strap molasses at your local bulk food store. As it is third pressing (or worse) it does not have much sugar left (but tons of flavour), so if you're using that kind of molasses you may want to add 3kg of cane sugar to compensate.
The other thing I've come to realize is that there are a lot of unfermentable sugars in molasses. When you take your original gravity reading the number will be skewed by these sugars. They show up on your hydrometer, but do not contribute to the final amount of alcohol in your wash, so expect some variation between your planned final gravity and what you actually get.
How to work around this? I've found that adding a full spectrum digestive enzyme (you can get them at your local health food store or pharmacy) will help break down some of these sugars, but it won't solve the problem completely.
One question you may have is "you're Canadian and you're using metric, which is awesome, Canadians rock!, but how do I convert weights and liquid measures when I'm working with molasses?"
Great question! I've found the below link that does a good job converting between weights and volumes.
http://convert-to.com/575/molasses-conversion-with-nutritional-facts-table.html
Your 2L of molasses above is approximately 2.8kg of sugar. Using this website, you can get a rough idea of what your original gravity and % alcohol will be for your wash.
http://homedistiller.org/calcs/sugar_sg
If you want to get a bit fancier, you can use this calculator, which is a lot more helpful when doing whole or partial grain distilling.
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/
So by now you'll have 23L of wash bubbling happily as the yeast does it work for the next couple weeks. Until then, I recommend you help yourself to another alcoholic beverage of your choice and keep reading and researching until your wash is ready to distill.
In the meantime, lets talk rum.
If you're starting out distilling, rum is one easy to make but deceptively difficult to master. To be honest, all you need is some sugar, molasses, yeast, nutrient, and a plastic primary fermenter. Simple, right? Yes!
Where the difficulty lays is developing a distilled product with the depth of taste that you can get from a good store-bought rum but lacks in your home made product. More on that in a later post though, let's just get you going for now.
First of all, let's start with a recipe. I find the following works well for me, as the ingredients are easily acquired and to me simpler is better.
- 2L of molasses (black strap, table, or feed grade*)
- 2kg cane sugar
- 6oz tomato paste (makes a great yeast nutrient, but leaves no residual taste after fermentation)
- 1/4 cup baker's yeast
- 1 full spectrum digestive enzyme tablet
- Water to top up to 23L
Mix all of it up in a properly sanitized primary fermenter, cover it with a towel for a couple days for your yeast colony to build, then seal it with the lid/airlock. After a couple weeks, or when your airlock stops bubbling you're ready to distill.
Sounds easy, and it is to be sure. And you'll get a pretty good product out of it, but there's some nuances that I've learned about the 6 or so times I've worked with this recipe.
The first is the molasses. You can do some reading about molasses and realize that the different grades have different taste, but also that each contains a different percentage of sugar. First extraction molasses (like table molasses) has a higher percentage, whereas livestock feed grade has much lower level of sugar.
* A note about livestock feed molasses. It can be bought at your local livestock feed or farm stores for a really good price. Like $30CDN for a 20kg bucket. Far cheaper than you'd be buying table or black strap molasses at your local bulk food store. As it is third pressing (or worse) it does not have much sugar left (but tons of flavour), so if you're using that kind of molasses you may want to add 3kg of cane sugar to compensate.
The other thing I've come to realize is that there are a lot of unfermentable sugars in molasses. When you take your original gravity reading the number will be skewed by these sugars. They show up on your hydrometer, but do not contribute to the final amount of alcohol in your wash, so expect some variation between your planned final gravity and what you actually get.
How to work around this? I've found that adding a full spectrum digestive enzyme (you can get them at your local health food store or pharmacy) will help break down some of these sugars, but it won't solve the problem completely.
One question you may have is "you're Canadian and you're using metric, which is awesome, Canadians rock!, but how do I convert weights and liquid measures when I'm working with molasses?"
Great question! I've found the below link that does a good job converting between weights and volumes.
http://convert-to.com/575/molasses-conversion-with-nutritional-facts-table.html
Your 2L of molasses above is approximately 2.8kg of sugar. Using this website, you can get a rough idea of what your original gravity and % alcohol will be for your wash.
http://homedistiller.org/calcs/sugar_sg
If you want to get a bit fancier, you can use this calculator, which is a lot more helpful when doing whole or partial grain distilling.
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/
So by now you'll have 23L of wash bubbling happily as the yeast does it work for the next couple weeks. Until then, I recommend you help yourself to another alcoholic beverage of your choice and keep reading and researching until your wash is ready to distill.
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