Making Rum using Molasses and the Alembic Pot Still

This recipe has been updated, please click below to see the blog post for the latest recipe: How to make Dark Rum from Molasses

By far the best quality Rum will be made using Molasses as a base. 2kg of Molasses will produce a the perfect rich rum flavour.

Instructions:

1. Add 2kg molasses and 4.5kg dextrose into your clean fermenter with 3L (101 oz) boiling water, stir to mix (don’t worry if doesn’t dissolve at this stage).
2. Top up to 25 Litres (6.6 gal) with cold water, stir to completely dissolve.
3. Add Turbo Carbon – this is important to absorb impurities produced by the yeast during fermentation.
4. Add yeast and leave to ferment for 7 days at ideally 22 – 28°C (71-82°F). Using molasses will create excessive foaming so place somewhere appropriate and don’t use an airlock (just rest fermenter lid loosely on bucket).
5. After fermentation, add Turbo Clear to remove >99% of the solids (spent carbon / yeast cells and other fermentation solids). Don’t worry if the wash remains hazy after treatment with Turbo clear – it’s more important that the wash doesn’t sit on the spent yeast and solids for >24hrs rather than trying to remove the last 1% solids...so go ahead and distil the wash 1 day after adding Turbo clear even if still hazy.
6. Distil the clear wash after siphoning off the sediment. For rum the perfect still will produce alcohol at between ideal 84 – 88% so if using a Turbo 500 still run for only 2 ½ to 3 hours to achieve this lower alcoholic strength. (Operating temperature will be about 68 °C (154°F)). For a fuller flavoured rum try using a pot still.
7. Once you’ve collected your distillate, dilute to 50% abv with good quality water then hold for three days in a 10L bucket adding one further sachet of Turbo Carbon. Stir twice daily then allow the activated carbon to settle on day 3 before fine filtering. Do not pass through activated carbon column filter as this will remove too much of the character from your rum.
8. Dilute to 40% abv with good quality water, bottle and leave to smooth for at least 1 month.