Well for what its worth, here is a 23 liter Rum:

4# cane juice sugar ,mexican cane flavored,
10#dark brown sugar
3tsp yeast nutrient
3tsp yeast energizer
1tsp lemon juice
1 pint breir rabbit full flavor/unsulphered

Heat and mix till all sugar/molasis is disolved. Use whip 2 min until full of oxygen. stir the yeast food in to cool sugar solution. Mix together and water down to 23 liters.

Add:
2 pks of EC1118, pitched at 76 ,df,,no starter, straight to surface, yeast falls to bottom and the good ones float back to top in about 15min.

Starts perking slow within 30-45 minutes. Keep blow off tube handy. ,just in case,

Yeah I know, its lots easier. Trying to stay away from turbos though myself. More for the reason of doing things with what is easily available at the local stores. On top of that I don't have any 6.5 carboys or room for any. The other reason is turbos seem to have a clearing problem and stinky smell that floculating ,sp?,yeasts just don't have in a pot. I won't have a reflux either just a small pot, pipe and worm bucket. If I had the reflux column that would be the way to go though.

Brew:

I've never had any problem with turbos clearing or smelling but I can understand using local stores.

Davey:

Don't worry about losing flavor with the reflux. Just run it a bit faster and look to pull your drip at 85% instead of trying for the 95 or 95% you would in a netural. There will be plenty of flavor there.

Good luck to both of you.

Cheers

Hey all rum lovers,
First of all, a single run of a mollasses wash is not rum, any more than a single run of grains is a sour mash whiskey. It has to be set back with the dunder into the lees. There are certain technics and specialized cuts involved for the best flavored rums.

There are specific and artful instructions from Harry, and Pint O shine in in the artisan-distiller.org forum. see the recipie section. Veru difinative, and detailed.

On the other hand, a good drink is a good drink. Elricko's recipie is a good drink. Been there done it. Your choice, if you want to copy a taste, or just enjoy.

"HELP!!!

ok, well I made my sugar/molassess mix, tossed in some turbo 48, waited 3 days, then used 1/2 of it - looked like coffee and milk - used traditional non reflux method runnng it a bit hot 80-84 degree C to maybe get some flavor thru.

Well ended up with about 80% abv, clear liquid (yes, tossed the first 50 ml heads) that when mixed half and half with H2O to get 80 proof does NOT taste like rum, and in fact smells like..., well, I don't know how to describe it except as a bit unpleasant, tart, rocket fuelish.

I guess I will try Elrickos reflux method, but what is going wrong? Don't have a lot of hope for reflux to give rum taste when non reflux winds up funky/

IF the sugar molasses was still bubbling a bit would this affect it?"

I thought maybe that might be it, but wasn't sure, figured only the good stuf would distill out. I will sit and wait and let the rest of the 3 gal simmer for awhile and try again.

"What some guy told me:
For a pot you toss fores, and collect everything down to the acrid smelling point including all of the heads and most all of the tails till you get to that nauseating smell, cutting off a little after that comes on. Then salt it down and pot again, tossing fores again, and seperating in lots of small containers. check them a couple days later when you have a 'fresh' nose thats not 'funked up' from running the pot, and can make the proper cuts for hearts and flavor with the other ends some to taste. Run those out or toss back in the next batch.

What I hear when I listen to all that:
Run twice, save hearts on second, use rest to kill weeds.

Of course I am often wrong, and misscommunicate most of the rest of the time."

"I imagine your local govt can make whatever laws they like if it is done by the letter of law and vote etc, at least in terms of ""dry"" laws. And as far as I know, distilling in the USA is illegal - federal law, and even though Alaska is way the heck up there, you are still part of the good old USA. I imagine the ""importation part of that law is importing for resell and not for bringing it in for your own consumption. I know that in the lower 48, where those type of ""dry"" counties or towns exist, it means driving to where you can buy, purchase a bunch, take it home, and when you are out, repeat the process.

Sounds kinda of a bad deal. Next option is to get involved in local govt and change the law.

(and cranium, not to pick on you, but this thread is for Rum, probally better to post your kind of question in the appropriate area - maybe General Qustions? plus you are much more likely to get more answers)"

"
Hey John I have a question for you.
I am almost done fermenting the seccond wash of my first rum and I have pretty high hopes.
My first 6gal wash was 4 lb each molasses and brown sugar, enough white sugar to bring the sg to about 85 and pitched with 1118 (not a fan of turbos).
The seccond wash is the same stuff added back to the dunder and lees (minus the yeast of course).
I have saved about 1/2 gallon of 70% distilate from the first run to add as feints to the seccond.
How many times should I do this to get a nice full flavor?"

"Hey Davey, and all you Rum loving gents out there.

Haven"t been on for a while, hope this information will still be of some use.

After about 8 not so great runs I think I"ve finally managed to make a decent Rum. from what I"ve read, we"ve all been running into the same initial problems.

Feflux Vs. Pot:

Reflux distillation is not just a method of striping out the purest ethanol from your wash (which seems is where the mind tends to go), It"s a method of more accurately breaking down your vapor into its components by temperature. This is actually a great help with Rum. Like John mentioned, understanding your cuts is of great help. And with reflux, you can get rather "clean" cuts.

With a pot still, you"re going to grab a general mishmash that will probably make a good drink, but will rob you of any control of your final product in terms of tinkering with flavor.

Funky smell/taste:

There are a couple of things to consider. One is sulfur. Molasses leaves behind a rather large amount of sulfur in its fermentation, this sulfur will come through in your distillate, and yes, it smells and tastes rather funky. Copper is nature"s sulfur sponge. The more contact with Copper the better when distilling Rum. This also goes back to using a reflux column. Packing a tall column with copper mesh will greatly reduce the sulfur content.

Another thing I ran into is Ammonia (talk about smell). Due to its volatile nature, it comes through VERY strongly in the distilling process. Using turbo yeast actually makes this more of a problem. Turbo comes with its own addition of DAP, when the yeast feeds on the DAP it seems to slurp up all the phosphates and leave behind the ammonias. Turbo yeast also comes with Ph balancing components that keep the wash pretty neutral. This is once again great for the yeast, bad for the ammonia.
Combine ammonia and sulfur and you got yourself something that smells like rocket fuel.

The good news is that lowering the Ph level to around 3-4 ish (roughly the acidity of house hold vinegar) will make the ammonia solidify to a crystal form and sink to the bottom of your drum (you can use citric acid additive, or even lemon juice).


If you want to avoid all the hassle of making cuts, I found that collecting everything through to the lower cuts (around 90c) will give you a heavy rum and stopping at around 82 (middle cut) will give you lighter Rum.


Just a quick word of aging. The Rum flavor you"re used to will most likely not be present right out of the still. Rum seems to have pretty complex esters in it that need to break down and release those sugary aromatics. Contact with oak seems to speed up this process and also add a rather distinctive "golden rum" flavor. In general I find that aging it around a month is a good start for letting the flavors come through.


Sorry for the lengthiness, hope this helps someone out there!

Happy Rum"en!



Al"