BrewDog Spirits - Spiced Rum 70cl - 500 Cuts Rum

Product Information

Rum can be made by distilling the beery type liquid produced from fermented fresh sugar cane juice. This method of rum production is common on the French islands, particularly Martinique where it is called 'rhum agricole'. Elsewhere, it is rare to find rums made directly from sugar cane juice. Traditionally, cane is harvested by cutters wielding machetes, who cut the cane close to the ground as this part of the stem has the highest concentration of sugars, before lopping off the leafy tops. A good cutter will average three tons of cane per day but this is a tiny fraction if what a machine can cut and (gradient allowing) mechanised harvesting is now used. This authentic, handcrafted rum exists to subvert the Status Quo when it comes to the bloodline of this spirit. Distilled in the world’s first triple-bubble still, after a five-day fermentation it is then double-pot distilled to create a white rum rich in flavour of tropical fruit and dark berries.

The process of extracting sugar from cane juice produces a by-product called molasses and this is what most rum is made from. Pot stills are the simplest and the original type of still. Extensively they are glorified copper kettles - indeed in some countries such as the Netherlands even call them 'kettles' rather than stills. These are the kind of stills used in Scotland to make malt whisky and France to make cognac. 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.. The sugar and molasses produced by the first process are termed A-grade and the second B-grade. The third batch of sugar produced by this process is known as Low-grade sugar and this is used to mix with the next batch of syrup to start the process again.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 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. This botanical rum recently won a silver medal at the London Spirits Competition and is from Cabezon Beverage, a Scottish craft spirit company. 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 Rum is produced from Genus Saccharum officinarun, the giant grass that’s better known as sugar cane. The plant takes between ten months and two years to reach sufficient maturity to harvest and extract its sugars. There are many different varieties of sugar cane and the variety and the region where it’s grown significantly affect the profile of the rum produced from it. HarvestingThe Scottish rum recipe is based on the Sea Shanty ‘wellermen’ song which talks about ‘sugar and tea and rum’.

Losses in volume to due evaporation are also more exaggerated in hotter climates (around 6% per year as opposed to 3% in Scotland) and high humidity can mean an almost equal loss between alcohol and water, meaning that although the volume is lost the strength remains fairly constant. To prevent casks destined for extended ageing from gradually emptying over the years, it is common for casks to be topped up with rum from other casks in same batch. Thus, you might start with ten casks of rum from a particular batch and ten years later be left with only five casks. Charcoal filtration of rum The BrewDog Distilling Company is charged with a single mission; to challenge perceptions of what a spirit can be. This is done with a meticulous eye for detail and an approach born of non-compromise – meaning everything is done under one roof, from scratch. Nothing is rushed. For a case in point we unveil their incredible hand-made rum Five Hundred Cuts – which took six months and thirty-five recipes to uncover. But their work has been very much worth it. It is common for caramel to be added to aged rums to 'correct' the colour, and lets be honest, often to darken the colour so potentially giving the rum an older appearance. Conversely, some aged rums are charcoal filtered to remove any colour and are bottled completely clear. So with rum what you see is not necessarily what you get. Although a closely guarded secret it is known that Bacardi use a mix of tropical woods and coconut shells to filter their charcoal. Charcoal filtration can also remove the colour imparted by age so a three year old rum may be crystal clear when bottled. Charcoal filtration may be used before and after ageing. Rum blendingBlending is the final process available to the distiller to alter a rum's character. Many rums are blends of light and dark rums of different ages. Rums may be 95% column still with just 5% or even less pot still to add character and flavour. The team say it is "deliciously smooth and creamy. Notes of vanilla, caramel, butterscotch and citrus, with a long and spicy finish." At the sugar mill, the cane is chopped and crushed to extract the juice which is boiled to reduce the water content and leave a syrup known as 'wet sugar', comprising approximately 30% sugar. This syrup is clarified and mixed with sugar crystals, which provide a core for the dissolved sugar in the syrup to crystallise on. This mixture is boiled and then cooled to encourage the sugar crystals to enlarge. It is then spun in a centrifuge to separate the crystals from the liquid. 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. A mentioned above the distiller must judge when to make the cuts during distillation so controlling what congeners are retained and discarded. Some stills are very simple, while others have devices which allow the distiller more control.

INDEPENDENT, FAMILY-OWNED, SUSTAINABLE DISTILLERY– Family-owned, Diplomático has been producing the highest quality rums from a combination of sugar cane honey and molasses since 1959. Diplomático controls its production process from field to bottle with a care for the local environment and people and has been awarded for its sustainable distillery The still is charged with the wash and then heat is applied to bring to the boil. The volatile 'high wines' or 'heads' will be given off first and set aside. These are undesirable compounds, partly due to being tainted as these first vapours effectively clean the still from the previous distillation. Ethanol alcohol and other desirable compounds are less volatile (slightly heavier) and so follow the low wines. Often described as the 'cut', it this proportion of the run which will be used to make the finished rum.For rum production ideally molasses should have at least 52% sugar content but sadly for the distillers there is no specification for molasses as this is a waste product of sugar processing. Thus a good sugar factory will produce bad molasses as it will have efficiently extracted most of the sugar. As the sugar processing industry becomes more efficient so the amount of rum that can be produced per ton of molasses is failing. Fermentation