BrewDog Spirits - Spiced Rum 70cl - 500 Cuts Rum

Product Information

This unaged rum is pot distilled from sugar cane molasses in Scotland by Dumfries-based Ninefold Distillery. As touched upon earlier, particularly when discussing the difference between light and heavy rums, there are basically two types of still used in rum production: pot (alembic) stills and column (Coffey) stills. The way the distiller can influence the type of distillate produced varies according to which of these two types of still are used. Due to their plentiful supply, rum is most commonly aged in American oak casks which have previously been used to age American whisky (bourbon). This is due to the rules of bourbon dictating that the whiskey must be aged in new white oak casks so once used they are useless to the bourbon industry, other than as a commodity to be sold to other distillers around the world. The inside of these casks are charred at the cooperage when first made. This caramelises natural sugars on the wood's surface increasing the vanillins. Casks may be scraped clean to remove any previous charring, and/or re-charred before being filled with rum: the quality of these casks, what they previously held, how many times they are refilled and their treatment dramatically affects the character they impart to the rum stored within them.

This botanical rum recently won a silver medal at the London Spirits Competition and is from Cabezon Beverage, a Scottish craft spirit company. It is common for stills with retorts to have tanks under each retort where the low wines and the high wines are sent in preparation for charging the retorts above for the following distillation. The liquids placed in the retorts will have a dramatic affect on the finished distillate. For example the first retort may contain low wines mixed with fermented wash, dunder and even some high wines. J. Gow Rum takes its name from the infamous Orcadian pirate John Gow and the new rum, ‘Revenge’ is named after the ship that the pirate renamed after leading a mutiny on board, due to poor work conditions.Rum produced from a pot still or single distillation column is usually described as heavy. Multiple-column stills can produce both heavy and light rums depending on where the spirit is removed from the still. Next follows the desirable part of the run, 'the cut', as the alcohol level of the distillate collected starts to fall, and the 'low wines' or 'tails' arrive and are set aside. As in Cognac and Scotland it is usual for pot still rums to be double distilled - put through the pot still twice with the distillate collected from the first distillation producing a distillate with an alcohol strength in the low twenties and the second distillation typically being over 70% alc./vol.. Whether a cask is a 'first re-fill', meaning the cask was previously used to age another spirit and this is its first time it has been used to age rum. Or it is a second or third re-fill will make a huge difference to the effect the cask has on the maturing spirit.

Rum is termed 'light' or 'heavy' depending the level of flavour components or 'congeners' - products of fermentation that are not ethyl alcohol. The level of these (esters, aldyhydes and lower alcohols) is dependent on the length of the fermentation and the purity to which it was distilled. When alcohol is concentrated during distillation, the levels of congeners are reduced. The fewer congeners, the lighter the rum, the more congeners the heavier it will be. Rum can also be made from cane syrup, made by boiling cane juice to remove some of its water content. ('Fancy molasses' is a term for 'inverted sugar' syrup where sucrose has been converted to glucose and fructose with acid or enzymes.) Sugar extraction

Charcoal filtration of rum

The Scottish rum recipe is based on the Sea Shanty ‘wellermen’ song which talks about ‘sugar and tea and rum’. The pH of the molasses will also affect fermentation and ideally will be in a range between 4.4 to 4.6 and this may be adjusted but the addition of the acidic residue (lees) left in the still after an earlier distillation. Dunder is the term given to lees which have been left in open dunder pits to concentrate the ester content and the acetic/butyric acids. Light or heavy rum