Molasses to Rum: Part 2
Part 8 in a series
Excerpts from "Divers Information on The Romantic History of St. Croix" by Florence Lewisohn, 1963, St. Croix Landmarks Society.
A LITTLE RUM-INATION. Every planter had his own opinion about making rum and the variations were endless. While the best rum came from cane juice alone, it was also the most expensive process, and today there are only two or three brands in all the West Indies made this way.
The early planters were known to use such flavor pickups as Seville oranges, lemons, tamarinds or any acid fruit. The St. Kitts distillers added sea water and swore by it. Others used nitre, tartar, common salt, vegetable or mineral acids.
The vegetable ashes supposedly kept back the heavy and fetid oil known by the British makers as the faints, but this also tended to keep back the fine, essential oils which flavored the rum. Another trick was to put back a few gallons of the high-proof distillate into the fermentation vats, which was sup-posed to add greatly to the quantity of the next rum.
The quality of the cane and its sweet content, known as Brix, also had a beating on rum-making. The market demand, too, had a direct bearing. If the price of sugar were high and that of rum low, the distiller would return more of the skimmings and other sugar-containing matter to the sugar clarifiers instead of sending them tothe still house. This way they gained in sugar value what they lost in rum. This practice could be reversed to make more or better rum and less sugar.
In the early days, the distiller used to test the rum for proof by taking it in his hand and smelling it, or by shaking it to judge the head on a high proof. The British islanders used an "oil proof" test in which olive oil sank in high proof rum.
The rum was stored and shipped in large casks called puncheons, of variable size from island to island, but usually holding from 110 to 150 wine gallons. On St. Croix they used a 140- gallon puncheon.
The British estimated the production of whole rum to finished sugar as approximately three to four. Always the individualists, the British also called their molasses, treacle; their lees, dunder; and their skimmings, scummings. They did call the product rum! They also did what distillers on the other islands thought was inexcusable - they put a small percentage of the lees or dregs of the process back into their fermentation vats. It may have been this practice that earned some rum the nickname of "kill devil."
The rums made on the island of St. Croix today are vastly different and better than the variable and heavy type of yesteryear. They are now made on a large scale in continuous column stills under highly controlled methods and exact processes, including the careful removal of the fusel oils and heads, resulting in a uniform, dry, light quality rum of excellent flavor and bouquet.
CONCLUSION: Truly, the Rums of St. Croix are so good that there must be some special secrets in their manufacture.
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