Odin Plays Around With Rum!
Sometimes I am so busy with iStill, my family, boating ... that hobby-distilling takes a second row seat. But it always comes back: the desire to distill something by myself for myself. Nothing professional, but ultra small-batch. Usually something new, a challenge, a puzzle to solve or a problem that needs fixing. I guess it is called "passion" for a reason, right?
Anyhow, distilling jumped to my front of mind just yesterday, and I acted on it immediately. What I made? Some rum, some spiced rum, actually.
I had some white rum, that was made a few years ago, but that I wasn't happy about. The taste profile was 1, 2, 3 for the respective first, second, and third dimensions of my Holy Trinity of Distillation model. Some light fruity notes at the front. A well-established middle-of-mouth flavor, where the molasses really shines through. And a BIG ASS finishing that lasted and lasted like forever. The problem? The third dimension, the back-of-mouth, throaty flavors dominated too much, overpowering both the lighter fruity flavors as well as the middle. And the back-end tastes also had an astringency to them, probably due to a high ash count in the original molasses, that we didn't clean up for.
The solution? Well, it would have been easiest to dilute the 48% strong rum to 30-35%, then redistill, and take a generous tails cut out of it. That might have brought the third dimension, where the rooty and nutty flavors reside, back from 3 to 2.5, maybe even 2.
But I decided to go another route, because of the astringency, and especially as I wanted to up the front-end a bit as well. As you cannot add by cutting out, what I did instead is that I added orange peel and cinnamon. The orange peel provides fruity flavors and boosts the first dimension. The cinnamon adds a warm back-end, replacing the slightly astringent current ending, and combines nicely with both orange and molasses flavors.
How much I used? One gram of dried orange peel per liter boiler content. And 2.5 grams of cinnamon. Next? A slow potstill run. Minimal heads cut, combined with a generous tails cut, resulted in a much nicer and more interesting drink. At 46% strengt, and with a few drops of honey added per bottle, in order to bring the overall taste from slightly sour to slightly sweet, as it is a rum after all, the first dimension went from 1 to 1.5. The middle stayed at 2. The back-end dropped in flavor intensity from 3 to 2.5, while warmth replaced the astringency of the initial third dimension. Flavor lengt went from 30 seconds back to 13 to 14 seconds.
Overall a great success! The resulting (slightly) spiced rum is now very drinkable and enjoyable. Even when it still needs a few weeks to mellow out and for the water and alcohol to properly marry. How to drink it? At room temperature, actually. No need to cool and dim your taste buds on this fine spirit!
