hello and welcome to Prohibition
University today let's try our hand at
making a little bit
determine what sort of proportions we're
going to have to use in when we make a
full-size batch in a brew kettle you're
going to find on the Internet any number
of recipes for rum a lot of them are
very nebulous a lot of them are very
crude in that they're using simply white
table sugar with a little molasses
thrown in for good measure that's not
what I'm interested in doing here I want
to make a better tasting rum than that
I've talked to a number of craft
distillers they're not ready and willing
and able to give up their exact recipes
for rum and I appreciate that
we did however have a gentleman in our
September workshop here at urban the
stories he came from Edmonton Alberta
and if I haven't already at this point
in time I'm going to be giving you a
sample of his rum made in his basement
and aged in an oak barrel for four years
it is phenomenal he gave me a few
generous pointers and I've followed up
on his advice so here's what you need to
know go to the grocery store and look
for molasses and you'll be shocked at
how expensive it is you can certainly
use it if you want but it is pricey what
I've done is I have gone to an animal
agricultural feed store right here in
Regina Saskatchewan this is where people
would go if they wanted grains or
nutrients and vitamins etc for their
horse their there their livestock
the molasses that I got there was
literally a quarter of the price that I
would have had paid at the grocery store
and from what I can see it tastes the
same it's just a little bit thinner I
don't know if they've added a touch of
acid or something to it the fin it out
but it is every bit as good as what you
get at the grocery store so now on the
scale in front of you here I have got
about 200 milliliters of water don't
worry about the color there was a little
bit of molasses in my measuring cup now
what I'm going to do I'm going to turn
my scale on here get it zeroed and I'm
going to be adding to that water 60
grams of molasses
lights up
now I'm going to be adding 50 grams of
pink sugar cane sugar is simply
evaporated sugarcane juice and it is a
little bit more expensive than your your
typical white sugar and your brown sugar
but that's okay okay so there we go
let's give that a little stir make sure
everything is dissolved now in a brew
kettle I would take that up to about 50
or 55 degrees centigrade just to make
sure that everything was nicely
dissolved in there now I want to see
what I've got for a gravity
in your workshop we've showing you how
to use the refractometers this stuff is
going to have a very high starting
gravity and in fact if I put a sample of
that onto the lens of my refractometer
it's going to be off the scale so if
you're doing rum at home here's second
thing you need to know you should go out
and buy yourself graduated cylinder and
the gravity meter any homebrew store
will sell these in a store that sells
home wine kits etc will sell these they
will cost you just a few dollars so now
I'm going to take my solution here and
I'm going to pour it in here like so
there we go and let's see what we got
for bad wonderful wonderful wonderful
okay so we've got about zero point nine
six zero point not sorry one point zero
nine six one point zero nine eight
somewhere in there which is about if you
could get a proper reading on your
refractometer would be around about 25
bricks so the gravities you're going to
be dealing with when making rum at home
certainly are going to be a little
higher than what you're used to for
making
Grainne mashes now the yeast that we're
going to be using comes from white labs
in California and it is simply their rum
distillers yeast and if you read the bag
it tells me I should do my ferments
between 25 and 30 degrees centigrade and
it tells me furthermore that this yeast
is tolerant for alcohol up to around
about 15 percent so based on my starting
gravity assuming that this all ferments
out and my finishing gravity ends up at
one point zero zero zero I'm going to be
looking at about 13% alcohol so I don't
think it's all going to firm it out so
but I do expect to get at least 10 or
11% so now I'm going to do this in large
scale in my brew kettle so to scale it
up here's what we know we're going to
use instead of 200 mils of water we're
going to use 20 litres instead of 60
grams of molasses we're going to use six
kilograms and instead of the 40 grams of
sugar we're going to use 4 kilograms
we're going to get all of that put into
the brew kettle heat it up to 50 degrees
C get everything nicely dissolved then
we're going to cool it back down to 30
degrees C at which point we're going to
add our yeast our nutrient and let the
fermentation process begin okay so
here's the graduated cylinder I've taken
a sample just using a measuring cup out
of the brew kettle poured it into the
graduated cylinder I've added my
specific gravity meter allowed it to
stabilize what I'm getting for a
specific gravity is one point zero nine
six now recall that in your workshop I
gave you the very simple mathematical
formula for trying to determine roughly
how much alcohol you're going to be left
with at the end of your ferment take
your starting gravity 1096 I'm assuming
this is going to ferment out more or
less completely down to a finishing
gravity of 1 in that case I am going to
end up with what's the what's the
mathematics 96 times
one three you're looking at around about
12% alcohol give or take the yeast that
we're using from wait labs is tolerant
up - apparently 14% alcohol so I'm right
in the range where the yeast is going to
be happy I'm going to give this a fairly
liberal dose of nutrients and let it
start fermenting and from what I
understand the ferments will take four
or five days and that's it that is one
variation of how you would make rum at
home if you were doing research in your
garage or in your basement
you