Food & Beverage Managment

An Introduction to Rum

"There's naught no doubt so much the spirit calms
as rum and true religion"
Lord Byron


History of Rum

During his second expedition in the "new world" in 1643, Christopher Columbus introduced the Americas to sugar cane, a recently discovered Asian plant.

Europeans started to plant sugar cane fields and develop the industry in order to trade this precious good throughout Europe. Very soon the Portuguese, Spanish, French and English all started to apply their brandy expertise to sugar cane.
In Barbados, hundreds of plantations and mills crushed the harvested cane and boiled the juice to form sugar crystals, it is the leftover juice that becomes molasses. Eventually, plantation owners discovered that when molasses is mixed with water and put out in the sun, it ferments into a spirit. In the mid-1600s, the former “waste” product of sugar production became the new drink of choice. Rum was born!

People had found a way to produce alcohol in surprisingly large quantities using only a modest volume of raw material. Suddenly, thanks to rum, sugar cane had two reasons for its popularity: sugar and alcohol…

In its early days this brandy, now called rum, found great success amongst the slave population and was even frequently used as currency on the West coast of Africa. Thereafter, it took but a short time for rum to become the beverage of choice of the buccaneers and pirates who dealt slaves and goods between Africa and America. Thus rum found the best possible way to become renowned around the whole world: being on board every ship!

Evolving from a popular beverage into a recognized and esteemed brandy, rum won the affections of the European aristocracy; in 1655, Admiral Penn of the British Royal Navy introduced the “grog”, a daily distribution of rum to every seaman on his ships.

But the history of rum took a real leap forward in 1731 with Admiral Vernon, who invented a beverage based on a mix: two volumes of water for one volume of rum, added to a piece of lemon peel… The punch was created! Now all kinds of mix became acceptable, with any type of fruit juice…
This new punch and the English way of drinking rum (mixed with tea, lemon or cinnamon), ensured the phenomenal success of rum – a success which continues to this day…

What is rum?
In the simplest terms, rum is a spirit made from sugar cane. Some rums are made from sugar cane juice while others are made from molasses, the byproduct of the sugar making process. Some rums are made from blends of sugar cane juice, cane syrup, and molasses, in varying combinations.


Sugar Cane
Rum distinguishes itself from other spirits by the plant from which it is made.
Sugar cane, a member of the grass family has its origins in Papau New Guinea but this hearty plant is grown in tropical climes around the world. The sweet juice of the mature plant is extracted by pressing the hard stalk in mechanical mills.
Some distilleries use this fresh juice while others use the by product of the sugar refining process known as molasses as the raw material for the fermentation process.


Fermentation
The addition of yeast to the sugar cane juice or molasses converts the available sucrose to alcohol in a process called fermentation. Typically this takes about a day but some distilleries use yeast that takes as much as ten days. To make other spirits, the starches found in grains must be cooked and then enzymes are used to convert the glucose to sucrose which can be fermented. The resulting fermented wine contains only about 10% alcohol by volume.


Distillation
To concentrate the alcohol in the sugar cane wine, the wine is boiled while the vapor is collected and condensed. The earliest pot stills resembled a tea kettle with a long spout and were capable of distilling only a few liters of alcohol at a time. Modern continuous stills are vertical columns about 10 meters high and are capable of distilling as much as 20,000 liters per day.
In the French islands, spirits made from sugar cane juice are typically distilled to a relatively low distillation purity resulting in a heavier tasting spirit.
Since molasses contains higher amounts of sulphur than does sugar cane juice, spirits distilled from fermented molasses are generally distilled to a high distillation purity to reduce the congeners that have been concentrated in the molasses.




Aging
Immediately after distillation, the fresh or raw spirits contain small amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas formed during fermentation which gives the spirit a hot harsh taste. Although some connoisseurs prefer fresh rum, most consumers prefer the more elegant taste of an aged spirit. Today, almost all rum is aged in used oak barrels that once held whiskey or bourbon. Aging can last from one to thirty years or more, making rum one of the most varied of the distilled spirits. During the aging process the rum acquires a golden color that changes to a dark brown with time.


Blending and Bottling
Although some rum is bottled directly from the still, most rum is aged and then blended before it is bottled for consumption. Once the spirit is bottled the benefits of age are arrested and little change occurs.


Alcohol Content
The bottled strength of rum depends greatly on consumer preferences. While some rum is bottled at about 40% alcohol by volume, other rums are bottled at the strength at which it was distilled or aged.




Frequently Asked Questions


What makes good rum?
The best rums are made under the strict supervision of an experienced distiller, from fresh raw materials. Some people swear pot-still rums are the best, but without the patience required to age these spirits they are not really special.


How does aging affect the color of rum?
Rum gains a slight yellow to brown color as it ages in oak barrels. But some rum is aged and then filtered to remove the color acquired during the aging process. And not all dark rums are aged. Distillers commonly add caramel coloring to their spirits to adjust the color. Sometimes this is just to compensate for the differences in the color of the rum from different barrels, at other times caramel is used to make the rum so dark that you can't see through the bottle.


What is rhum agricole?
Rhum agricole is a spirit made in the French islands from fresh sugar cane juice. To be called rhum agricole it has to be distilled to about 72% alcohol in a single-column continuous still. There are other specifications, but these are the ones most important to the consumer.


What about rhum vieux?
Ahhh yes, rhum vieux. This is rhum agricole that has been aged in oak barrels of less than 650 liters capacity for at least three years. Rhum vieux is considered the best of French rhums, but when these spirits are aged even longer they're called Hors d'Age, Reserve Special, and other names of distinction.

I have had a bottle of rum for ten years in my cabinet. Is it getting better? No. Once an aged rum is bottled there's no longer any benefit from age. Aging in barrels is the only way to improve the taste of a rum. But if you're talking about a rum that was bottled straight from the still, you will note a slight improvement in taste with time, but those benefits diminish after about six months.