Pugi's rum (Pugirum)

About this recipe

Pugi arrived at this recipe after "many, many pounds of fermentables" and many different washes, and credits the ideas of others along the way. It makes a fairly heavy rum, in which you taste and smell the molasses.

The yeast bomb is yeast, nutrients and vitamins boiled together. It works like the fast, warm fermentations of the Caribbean, where speed keeps bacterial infection at bay: Pugi once fermented a batch in 48 hours in a shop that fell to below freezing overnight. Without it, he found the fermentation took ten days and the molasses flavour came through less.

The rum oils are the late part of each spirit run, saved and added to the next. Each time they become more concentrated - and, in Pugi's words, they are the key to his rum.

Original recipe discussion ↗

Ingredients and calculator

Baker's yeast: a cup for the wash, plus a quarter-cup boiled in the yeast bomb as nutrient.

Method

1. Make the yeast bomb. Crush the vitamin B tablets, then boil them with the DAP, Epsom salts, the quarter-cup of baker's yeast and a gallon of water for 15 minutes. Strain.
2. Make the wash. Combine the molasses, brown sugar, yeast bomb, water and dunder - or water, the first time - to make 37.9 L. Add the cup of baker's yeast.
3. Ferment - fast. It ferments out in less than 36 hours. Give it plenty of headroom in the fermenter, or keep a good mop handy.
4. Settle. Let it sit for a day to settle.
5. Drain, leaving the yeast. Drain the fermenter, leaving about 1.9 L of wash behind. This keeps the yeast ready to go for the next wash.
6. Strip fast. Strip the wash as fast as the still will go - the aim is to force the flavours through. Keep the dunder.
7. Repeat. Make the wash again, pour it onto the yeast left in the fermenter, and strip again.
8. Charge the spirit run. Put the low wines from the two stripping runs into the still with an equal amount of saved dunder, and the rum oils from earlier runs.

Fermentation

Expect a violent, fast fermentation: under 36 hours is normal with the yeast bomb. Pugi has not noticed any taste of magnesium or nitrogen coming through into the spirit; the boiled yeast provides protein for the live yeast.

Distilling

Run the spirit run gently - not too fast, not too slow - and divide it like this:

• Heads: make the heads-to-hearts cut as usual. Put the heads into a separate container for vodka or neutral spirit; do not reuse them in the rum.
• Hearts: collect until the wet-cardboard taste appears - on Pugi's still, from about 85% down to 50% ABV.
• Wet-cardboard spirit: roughly 50% down to 40% on his still. Add it to the neutral container, not the rum.
• Rum oils: collect from about 40% down to 20% in a separate container. Treat them with care: always add them to the next spirit run, and always collect them again. They concentrate with every run, and before long they begin to overflow into the hearts.

The strengths are from Pugi's still; yours will differ, so let taste guide the cuts.

Fermenting a wash is legal in many places; distilling it often is not. Distil only where it is legal to do so, and check your local licensing first.

Troubleshooting

The fermenter overflowed.

The yeast bomb makes for a very vigorous start. Leave much more headroom.

Not enough molasses character.

Keep adding the rum oils: the flavour builds over several spirit runs.

Variations

• Finishing. To each gallon of full-strength spirit, Pugi adds a slice of pineapple, two cloves and half an ounce of raisins, leaves it for a month shaking now and then, and then dilutes it to drinking strength.
• Colour. He colours it with home-made caramelised sugar - well coloured, never burnt - which he prefers to molasses.
• All molasses. For a rum with no added sugar, see SBB's all-molasses rum.

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