Today we are looking at rum. It going to be an all molasses rum using a famous proven recipe. Its going to be an estery golden rum, not spiced or flavoured with anything strange. No pirates, no historical recipes - just a really simple, easy to make, super pure smooth, flavourful golden rum.

The original recipe is from the home distiller's forum, and is called "SBB's All Molasses Rum" by Saltbush Bill.

https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewt...

The recipe in the description below is taken directly from Salty's instructions, and I will follow his advice to the letter in this video.

So to make a 27L first generation wash, you will need:
A 30L fermenter
8L of molasses
Contents of 1x vitamin B complex capsule or 1x ground up Vit B tablet.
1 good pinch Epsom Salts.
Lowens or other Bakers Yeast.
Boiling Water 4.5 L boiling or very hot water.

METHOD
• Start by putting the 8L/ 2.1Gal of molasses into the Fermenter.
• Tip the 5 L/1.3Gal of boiling water in on top and stir to fully dissolve the Molasses.
• Add cold water to around 25L/6.6 Gal mark and add Vitamin B and Epsom Salts. SBB uses a pressure washer to add the cold water as it really mixes everything up well. Sounds weird, but that’s what we are going to do.
• Add the Vit B in until this point too much heat may destroy the Vit B.
• Top fermenter up with cold water to the 27-28L/ 7.3 Gal mark.
• It should be around 35-38C at this point.
• Throw in a good handful of Lowans or other Bakers Yeast.
• Ferment until it stops fizzing (5-7 days at 30C)

IN ALL SUBSEQUENT WASHES REPLACE THE HOT WATER WITH 4.5L/ 1Gal OF VERY HOT DUNDER FROM THE LAST RUN.

Some thoughts on fermentation from reading the whole 14 page thread:
1. Don’t substitute an alternative yeast such as Lalvin EC-1118 - Do use baker's yeast. It prefers molasses.
2. Don’t substitute another yeast nutrient for the vit B and Epsom Salts.
3. Let it ferment hot - around 30C - if its too cold where you live, use a heat mat.
4. It should not make a huge krausen (foam on top of the wash) but do leave some headroom - 10 percent of the fermenter. It fizzes like coca-cola while its actively fermenting.
5. Don't worry about gravities. If you have blackstrap/animal food grade molasses it should take care of itself. You may need more if its agricultural fertiliser grade.

DISTILLATION

Salty recommends either:
• double distillation in Pot Still mode - Stripping run then Spirit Run.
• OR - reflux distillation, single run with 4 plates in the column

I am going to do a single slow run, with a 4 plated column. Make your cuts as you see fit, I am going to keep my hearts pure, avoiding too much heads and not digging into the tails. Discard your foreshots and keep your Feints in a rum-only feints jar, collecting until the distillate is cloudy, add this to the still on the next generation's spirit run.

OAKING AND AGEING.
This rum is pretty rough straight off the still, age it for as long as possible minimum three months, better 6 months, better again…..12 months and longer.

SBB recommends one 15cm stick of medium char oak per litre of spirit. Use your favourite. Better yet, get an oak barrel. I have ordered a 15L barrel for my rum. Which should be good for about 3 generations of rum, and keep my rum needs going for the foreseeable future.