HOW POT STILL RUM WAS MADE

The still house in which the rum was made contained a number of large wooden vats called butts, generally 10 or 12 of them averaging from 750 to 1,000 gallons capacity. Copper pot-stills with a capacity approximately the same as a butt were located outside of the still house to accommodate the wood fires which heated the pots. An open shed covered the distilling equipment to keep rain off. In the bottom of each butt there was a 2 inch hold stoppered with a long wooden plug. This was removed when fermentation was complete (in from 4-to 6 days) and the fermented mash ran down in wooden troughs to the pot-still.

Three types of mash were used for fermentation: the chief one being a mixture of about one part molasses to five parts water, to which was sometimes added cush-cush, the fine Bagasse particles left in the strainer when the cane juice ran down from the mill. This was used as a yeast or mother. To this was usually added some form of acid, and some lime or vegetable ash. When all this was fermented, it was ready for use.

The second type of fermentation could be used only during crop time, usually before any molasses was available from the new cop. It was pure cane juice direct from the mill, requiring no special additives to start fermentation as the juice contained wild yeast, the whitish powder found around the knot or joint of the cane stalk.

The third fermented mixture came from using all the skimings from the sugar process, added to the molasses. This also could be done only during crop time. Next to the pot-still and elevated to about the same level, connected by a gooseneck pipe, sat the doubler or retort; usually made of wood. It had another connecting pipe which ran to the final piece of equipment, the pewter worms or coils of pipe which were suspended in a large cistern of cold water. When all was ready, the pot-still was filled with fermented mash; the doubler filled to about 1/4 its capacity with low wine, a weak low-proof rum which comes at the beginning and end of each distillation. The doubler usually had about 100 to 150 gallons of low wine in it.

The two vessels were closed and fire started under the pot-still. As the mash cooked, the resulting vapors went over into the doubler by the gooseneck which went down to within two or three inches of the bottom. These hot vapors in turn started the low-wine boiling and these combined vapors gained much in alcohol or proof strength, passing on into the pewter worms. The hot vapors running down through the cold pewter worms condensed into the liquid known as rum, and ran into a receiving vessel - always a wooden tub, usually made by cutting down a puncheon.

Approximately the first five gallons of the condensed liquid were drawn off as low-wine to put back intro the doubler as they retained some of the low quality condensate from the tail end of the previous distillation. Once this was done, the rum began to run at about 140* proof and run until the proof dropped to about 108*. From this one run there would come about 100 wine gallons of rum with an average proof of about 120*.

When the proof dropped below 108*, the rum was "cut" which meant that the distillate coming out was too inferior for rum and was accumulated as low-wine. This was run out until there were about 100 to 150 wine gallons of low-wine which were put back into the low-wine butt to be used to charge the doubler again for the next distillation.

The operation was then stopped. The exhausted low-wine in the doubler was run back into the pot still and together with all the used fermented mash in the pot, known as the lees, was run out into the lees pond outside the still house and discarded. The process was then ready to start all over again.

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