Hello to all, Time for an update.

First its been an absolutely perfect day here in the Great Smokies, and I just got back from the grocery store with some herbs etc. for my rum batches, to start makeing some small samples of different flavors.

Background, I have several years worth of refluxed neutral ,2 X distilled, sitting on carbon at 55% in 6.5 gal carboys ,actually compared it with Schmirnoff red label, last week, and couldn't abide that tast. Tossed it into the tails bin,. Also, a gal. of Irish single malt from DME, a run of 3 grain cooked and mashed, 3 runs of rum, a large run of UJSM corn ,uncooked,, and 3 runs of the UJSM corn ,where I ran out of sugar, and used dark brown sugar and a qt. of mollasses}, now 6 weeks old.

Well, I just poured a sip of the last to test, no oak, just aged in gal. jugs, and I have to report, this is the very finest flavor, I have ever injoyed. Sweet, no bite, or harshness, and the aftertast is like sweet resh corn, and just a hint of it.

This is not bragging, because this happened totally by accident, due to my not haveing regular sugar on hand. But, for my taste, this is so much better than the original rec. And it is almost as easy to use as just a pure sugar wash, and one dose of yeast will last many, many batches.

Had I made this early on, that is all that would be sitting in my storage carboys, except a little to share with others for their own tastes. To me, this is better than the exclusive, and very expensive bottle of scotch, aged in sherry cask, my son brought me from
Scotland, after visiting most of the distilleries.

Every ones tast is different, but this really suits mine. The herbs I bought can go into the kitchen for whatever, they won't go into this rum. Going to start some more, just as soon as I get back to civilization and can get ingredients, and some more storage containers.

Thought I would pass this on for any who wanted a totally unique taste ,and it is totally different from anything I have ever tried, and I have tried most everything commonly availiable commercially,.

And its only 6 weeks old!

And the Rum endeavors continue...

I have to say, I"ve made some pretty complex macerated liquors, some that require multiple stages of careful distillation, And Rum is still making me feel like a newbie.

I distilled my last wash ,as I mentioned before, 19.5% ABV of brown sugar and molasses,, only the top half of my pro II with two lightly packed copper meshes and
had to run it twice to get it to 85%.

I stopped collecting at right around 88c. I still can"t seem to get that clean rum taste. Considering I"ve never had non-matured rum before, I can"t really discern the correct "bad flavor" the rum needs to mature out of.

I bottled the batch into separate bottles each with its own attempt at spicing.
For now the flavor curve is first sweet ,a bit of that added molasses coming through, then a sharp drop into a rather metallic flavor and then it finishes with a flavor that actually resembles the rum I"m more used to drinking.

Can anyone tell me if I"m on the right track and this is simply a matter of waiting for the rum to mature? With Wines I"ve made I noticed the maturation helps with flavor, but it was never a case of it tasting "bad" to begin with.

I purposefully did not polish the rum with carbon. I"m trying to aim for a thick full bodied rum.

Any pointers would be much appreciated!

Defiantly an idea worth trying.
Thanks for the info Elriko!

ok good post Alex_C sounds promising I have had 3 bottles of molasseses with 3 bag's of dark brown sugar and about 3-4 cups of regular white sugar the with Red Star bread yeast...The fermentation has been going pretty well and I hope to have it done by this weekend or next well or until I get my still done and the order from brewhaus.com that is taking ups forever to deliver. well I will tell you how its going and hopefully get some pics of the still once I get all the fittings