Tag: rum

DonQ Rum Visit to Puerto Rico

This summer I visited the Destileria Serralles Puerto Rico, the home of DonQ Rum.

DonQ is distilled in the southern part of Puerto Rico, in Ponce. The distillery has been on the same site since 1865. As with most rum distilleries, it was once the site of a sugar refinery and the distillery was a small part of the overall operation. Puerto Rico stopped producing sugar in the 1980s and the distillery became the important business.

As with distilleries in the United States, during Prohibition Destileria Serralles was closed. After Prohibition ended, they rebuilt the distillery, this time with column stills to replace the previous pot stills. One of those distillation columns from 1934 is still in use today.

Making Rum

The molasses for DonQ is purchased on the open market; the low-sugar stuff from the Dominican Republic or thereabouts, and the high-test sugar-rich stuff from Gautemala. (I learned only recently that with improving technology and higher prices for sugar, they are stripping more sugar out of molasses so they need to suplement lower-quality molasses with special high-sugar stuff so that there is enough sugar in the liquid to ferment.)

The molasses is shipped into the port of Ponce and then transported to the distillery, where it is pasteurized to prevent any spontaneous fermentation.

It is then fermented in stainless steel fermenters with their own strain of yeast until it reaches 8-10 percent alcohol by volume. They distill two rums that are later blended; a "light" and "heavy" version. The lighter version ferments for a lesser time than the heavy.

The heavy rum is distilled in the original beer column (the first column of a multi-column still) from 1934. It looks just as old as it is.

The light rum is distilled in the newer, multi-column stills.

After distillation, the rum is aged. The barrels used at DonQ are used twice before they buy them: the first time by the bourbon industry (as with most rums, tequilas, and scotch because barrels can only be used ounce for bourbon by law), but also another time for "light whiskey" which I take to mean blended whiskey like Seagram's.

Thus there should be less wood influence from these barrels than on other products. Furthermore, they reuse them about 20 times and never rechar them.

The rums are aged at a few different proofs, aged separately as light or heavy-style rums, and some is aged as a "medium" rum; a blend of the two. There are also some solera-aged rums in ex-sherry barrels, which are added to some of the blends.

Sustainability Practices

Roberto Serralles is a sixth-gernation Serralles family member who holds a PhD in environmental sciences. He is responsible for making this distillery more eco-friendly with the goal of making it waste-free. If given the chance to see him speak, I highly recommend it because he is engaging, authentic, enthusiastic, and making a real difference. Some of the innovations he has helped develop are already being copied by other distilleries.

The DonQ website has a great overview of the sustainability practices in place, though from what we learned on-site many of these are evolving from how they are described there.

The carbon dioxide released during the fermentation process used to be captured and sold to use to carbonate sodas, but a change in legal regulations has made this undoable in the short term.

The distilled molasses "beer" is only 8-10 percent alcohol, then is distilled up to 75 – 90 percent. That leaves a lot of excess water with organic material leftover – during the height of their production 350,000 gallons of wastewater per day.

The goal is to separate out the organic matter from the water so that you can reuse the water. First they use anaerobic digesters, in which bacteria eat the organic matter and release biogass. (I want to write a book about distillery waste and call it "Everybody Farts".) This biogass is burned to produce heat at the distillery and reduces the distillery's oil consumption by about 50 percent.

The next stage is aerobic decomposition, which further reduces the organic matter and produces brownish water. They used water this for irrigation, but as I understand it the water isn't ideal, so they are replacing this system with a new membrane filtration system that Roberto Serralles was pretty proud of.

That and other systems are in development, but some of the development has been delayed due to a significant business change. You'll learn why in tomorrow's post.

October 7, 2011
Sugarcane and the Environment

For the most part rum is made from molasses, the byproduct of sugar production. So when we study the issue of the environmental impact of sugarcane production we need to keep in mind that molasses is the waste product of sugar production. Rum is recycling!

That said, we're studying not just sugar but sugarcane production so let's look at its impact. Most of this information comes from Sugar: A Bittersweet History by Elizabeth Abbott (2008). See the references page for more information.

In Cuba where they couldn’t purchase pesticides and fertilizers due to economic issues, they made their own version of organic sugar farming.

Sugar beets are a rotational crop so they don’t need much fertilizer or pesticide. It doesn’t cause much erosion or contamination.

The sugar industry ruined the Everglades. It was protected by President Harry Truman, but sugar planters drained it and plantations' phosphorous runoff hurt much of the topsoil.

Abbott writes about sugar's impact: “The World Wildlife Fun reports, cane has likely ‘caused a greater loss of biodiversity on the planet than any other single crop, due to its destruction of habitat to make way for plantations, its intensive use of water for irrigation, its heavy use of agricultural chemicals, and the polluted waste-water than is routinely discharged in the sugar production process.’”

On the other hand, “Although Brazilian cane production is notoriously destructive to the environment, cane-derived fuel is precisely the opposite. It is much cleaner than fossil fuels and contains no contaminants such as sulfur dioxide. It emits much less carbon dioxide and protects the climate by vastly reducing carbon emissions, hence reducing pollution. It is sustainable. It yield 8.3 ties as much energy as as that expended to make it and, as new cane varieties are developed, will yield even more. Even its by-products are valuable, and Brazilian mills process them into electricity for their own use and to sell to the national grid…. Cane-based ethanol is the Twenty-First Century’s miracle-in-waiting.”

The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link.

September 19, 2011
Announcing the Sugar Spirit Project

Today marks the launch of the second Sponsored Project on Alcademics: The Sugar Spirit. The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum.

Rum is made from any sugarcane derivative and is the real sugar spirit, but in this research project I'll primarily be studying sugar itself.

In writing about cocktails, we often come across recipes calling for different forms of sugar: demerara, muscovado, evaporated organic cane, superfine, etc. I've wanted to study the differences in those sugars for quite a while now so I'm thankful to Bacardi Rum for giving me the support to do so.

Along the way, I'll be looking at the history of sugarcane, its byproducts (including molasses, of course), modern and historical production methods, forms and uses, and much more.

I've put up an outline of future topics for discussion and experimentation. The outline is on the project index page, which can be reached by following this link or clicking the Sugar Spirit project logo above from any blog page you see it on.

This is going to get pretty nerdy, and I know that's how you like it.

The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link.

August 9, 2011
Angostura Rums Distillery Visit

In my last post I talked about the history and production of Angostura Bitters. In this one I'll talk about the history and production of Angostura Rums. I visited the distillery on Trinidad in March 2011.

History of Angostura Rums

The House of Angostura was in the bitters business since 1824, but didn't enter the rum business until after their move to the island of Trinidad in 1875. At first they were dealing with bulk rums rather than distilling their own, but in 1945 they purchased their own distillery. It wasn't until the 1960s that the profits from rum outsold those of bitters. In 1973 they purchased the Fernandes Distillery located next door and incorporated those brands (including Vat19) into their production.

According to the film we watched at the distillery, in 1991 they had a production capacity of 22 million liters of alcohol per year. According to their website, it's now 50 million liters. Wow! The distillery takes up 20 acres of land. They make both their own brands, rum for other people, and sell bulk rum. More on the other brands later.

Production of Angostura Rums

Currently all the products are made on enormous column stills. They say they've been experimenting with some pot still stuff, but they're not making anything yet.

No sugar has been produced on the island since 2003, so all the molasses to make these rums is purchased on the open market. (10Cane, which is also made on Trinidad but I don't believe at this distillery, uses some fresh local sugar cane juice in their rum blend.) We tastes molasses off the grate where it is poured into the system- it reminded me of old-style black licorice.

(Grate through which molasses is poured.)

For different rum products made at the distillery they use different strains of yeast. Their barrels are ex-bourbon barrels. These are reused to age rum three times before they're discarded or recycled. We weren't allowed to enter the aging warehouse as they said it's a bonded property. From outside, it didn't look nearly big enough to age all the rum produced here, but they said it's their only aging warehouse it turns out they have five other aging warehouses also.

For further reading, I suggest Ed Hamilton's write up on MinistryOfRum.com.

The Line of Rums

After the distillery tour we did a tasting of some of the rums with Master Distiller Jean Georges. Oh, by the way, the line of Angostura rums is finally coming to the US soon, and they are tasty.

The 3-year reminded me (keep in mind my tasting notes aren't supposed to make sense to anyone but me) of the insides under-ripe banana peels, with a soft creaminess that wasn't too vanilla-y.

The 5-year, interestingly, is actually filtered to remove some of its color. It has the caramel-vanilla notes you'd expect from a rum of this age, but with a nice fuzzy texture. I was also picking up a lot of notes of liquid limestone. The finish had some mint/oregano spice to it and it was just a touch tannic.

The 7-year rum is actually the 5-year rum which is blended and then put back into casks to marry for 2 years. The nose is all warm caramel apple and cheesecake pie crust on this one, with a spicier mouth with notes of peppermint. It's also oily in texture and slightly ashy.

One thing Jean Georges said about all of their rums is that they have a short finish. "None of our spirits overstay their welcome. They do their thing and move on, leaving you to want another sip."

I am not sure if their "single barrel" is coming to the US or not, but I enjoyed drinking that during my visit. Most of the time I drank that or the 7-year-old. When I wanted a mixer, I'd mix it with their soft drink Lemon Lime & Bitters, locally known as LLB. (Note to Angostura: you should consider bringing this to the US also in select markets.)

Angostura also produces Zaya rum, The Kraken spiced rum (according to MinistryOfRum), Vat 19, and White Oak (which is very popular in Trinidad).

March 16, 2011
California Rum

Last week I visited the St. George Spirits distillery to sample their new rum, Agua Libre, and watch them distill more of it.

The new release was distilled from fresh California-grown sugar cane juice (not molasses) and aged for two and a half years in French oak barrels.

From the media contact:

After pressing 25 tons of sugar cane from Kalin Farms of Southern California's Imperial Valley, with a press imported from India, they distilled 750 individually numbered bottles. We still need to slap some labels on the bottles and will probably start
selling them late May/early June for $60 a bottle at the store in
distillery tasting room. Bar Agricole will be the first account to
carry the rum when they open in May.

This isn't the first rum released from St. George Spirits though. They also made Eurydice, a rum exclusive to Smuggler's Cove in San Francisco. Distiller Lance Winters said that one was made from different varieties of sugar cane, and if I remember correctly it was aged in an ex-bourbon barrel as well as French oak. I've just had each of the rums once but if I remember correctly both are grassy and vegetal, but Eurydice is a lot more funky/gamey than Agua Libre.

I really like the Agua Libre and I think fans of agricole rums and Smith & Cross will really like this one as it's sort of a combo of the two styles.

As for the new rum being distilled on the day of my visit, it is made from sugar cane grown in Brawley, California. The grower, Carson T. Kalin, was at the distillery to speak to us and I sort of nerded out on sugar cane. The farm is apparently located at California's last sugar beet processing facility, (I didn't know sugar beets even grew in CA) and so far the sugar cane is purely experimental. Kalin said he is trying to find varieties suited to the hot and dry weather that would be watered by irrigation as there isn't the rainfall of the tropics there. And as sugar can has the opposite growing season of sugar beets, they could always be harvesting.

In the short term, the only thing the cane is being used for is making rum. They harvest the sugar cane by hand rather than by machine, because the sugar cane crushing machine in the distillery needs to use tall stalks of cane rather than the small segments the machine produces. After crushing the cane in the distillery, they ferment the cane juice for 15 days before distilling. I tried the fermented sugar can juice and it was crazy sour and I am glad nobody took a picture of the face I made. Luckily, once through the still and a couple years in the barrel and it fixes it right up.

April 6, 2010