Although rums is produced mostly in sugarcane growing countries around the world like India, the Philippines and Australia and in many non-sugar producing countries that buy the natural spirit then age it and blend it, the Caribbean is the primary geographical area associated with rum. Barbados is historically considered the birthplace of rum and the heart of its production, its origin closely tied to the rise of sugar plantations in the 17th Century. The island is often cited as the first to record large-scale rum production using molasses from sugarcane plantations which were fermented and distilled into alcohol. One of the first instances where the word rum is documented can be found in an undated manuscript at the Library of Trinity College in Dublin entitled A brief description of the Island of Barbados believed to have been written around the year 1651 that states:

“The chief fuddling they make in the Island is Rumbullion (slang for a noisy uproar), alias Kill-Devil, and this is made of sugar cane distilled, a hot, hellish and terrible liquor.”

For years, rum has been considered an unsophisticated, cheap spirit only good for mixing. Contributing to this misunderstanding is the theory that historical European elites viewed rum as an unrefined, raw, low-cost colonial byproduct of the imperial sugar trade and a lower-class vice, creating a cultural stigma that lingered for centuries, while whiskey and cognac successfully branded themselves as refined luxury spirits. Another theory is that while whiskey, bourbon, and brandy have strict, internationally enforced laws governing how they are made, aged, and labeled, rum is produced in dozens of different countries, each with its own regulations. In many regions, the number on a rum bottle doesn't reflect the youngest spirit inside, like whiskey does; a rum bottle labeled "Solera 23" might actually feature a blend of rums aged between three and twenty three years, misleading consumers. A third theory is that many producers take column-distilled spirits and heavily doctor them with added sugar, artificial flavors and colorings to mask the lack of actual barrel aging thus enhancing what is actually a mediocre product.

Rum may have also gotten a bad rap because of its association with piracy. The association between pirates and rum is tied to the Royal Navy since many pirates were former naval sailors or privateers who brought the navy's daily rum-ration culture with them when they turned to piracy. Although before the golden age of piracy (1650-1730) pirates and naval sailors preferred beer, brandy and wine, during those years rum was cheap and abundant and functioned almost like a currency in the Caribbean. Pirates often raided merchant vessels to seize them for both consumption and trade. Sailors often mixed rum with lime juice and water to make grog, used to make stale shipboard water drinkable and to ward off scurvy. By the late 1600s, rum became a primary commodity when it was shipped from the Caribbean to Europe and North America providing substantial profits and wealth for the colonies. In the 1700s, the British colonies were the most important producers of rum and Great Britain was the largest consumer and importer of rum in the world.

Today there are many conscious producers trying to change that image and are producing premium products to compete with and attract whiskey, bourbon and brandy drinkers. Rum produced today is far from being a hot, hellish and terrible liquor as described in 1651. While all unaged spirits are clear and primarily composed of water and ethanol, not all distilled spirits taste the same before they are aged. All distilled spirits derive from sugar, however, in some cases like whisky, the source material has no sugar content so it has to undergo a process to convert their starches into sugar. Since sugarcane already contains sugar, making rum requires a relatively simple process. Once extracted from the sugarcane, yeast is used to break down sugar molecules and create alcohol through the process of fermentation. The distinct flavor and aromas of spirits are heavily influenced by their base ingredients which in the case of rum is sugarcane juice or molasses, fermentation methods and the distillation process itself.

Fermenting the sugarcane juice or molasses using either proprietary yeasts or natural ones produce a low-alcohol liquid known as wash. [1] The wash is then placed in a still [2] and heated to a high temperature causing the alcohol to vaporize [3] and rise to the top. As the vapor rises, it passes through a copper coil cooled by cold water that causes the vapor to condense back into a liquid form, which is then collected in a separate container. The resulting liquid, known as the heart [4] of the distillation, is then further processed to remove impurities through filtration or other methods and then refined to produce the final product called a neutral spirit. This final product is usually aged for months or years in different types of wooden barrels to add complexity and color and in some cases blended to create unique combination of flavors.

However, not all rums are created equal, rum manufacturing in the Caribbean islands is in great part a function of the local culture and traditions, therefore the flavor profile of the final product is different depending on the island it is produced. Within a single island and even within a single rum manufacturer, fermenting, distilling and aging processes may vary, producing different types of rum that are difficult to separate into specific types or classes. Generally, rum may be classified as white, gold or dark, it can also be classified as aged or unaged or by the number of years aged, by the island made or by the type of raw material used; cane juice or molasses. However, it is not that simple as for example white rum can be aged or unaged, gold and dark rums can be made from molasses or cane juice or from a blending both. The one standard in this regard is that although rum can be made from sugarcane juice anywhere, rum identified as rhum agricole can only be made made from sugarcane juice in the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Gudeloupe, and if identified as Cachaça has to be made in Brazil.

It may be reasonable to believe that spirits should taste like the material they come from, in the case of rum it should taste like sugarcane, tequila like agave, scotch like barley and cognac like grapes. But the truth is that spirits have flavors unrelated to their source material acquired during their manufacturing process. While distillation in itself does not create flavor in any significant way, it just filters out undesirable flavors and concentrates desirable flavors, except for flavored rums liked fruit infused and spiced rums which flavor is imparted artificially after their manufacturing process is completed, there are two ways to impart flavor in the rum making process, the fermentation-forward method like the one used in Haitian clairins or Jamaican overproof rums and the aging-forward method like the ones used in Barbados.

Fermentation-forward means that most of the rum’s flavor is created during the fermentation stage which takes place at the beginning of the rum manufacturing process. Most rum fermentation takes between one and five days. Shorter periods generally create a lower flavorful but stronger in alcohol content wash. Longer periods generally create a more flavorful wash at the expense of alcohol content. Although even longer fermentation taking weeks or months do not create additional alcohol, doing so may create more flavorful wash. The wash is basically water, ethanol both which have little or no flavor and other organic compounds known as congener which include among other things esters. Adding dunder, also known as stillage or vinasse and and muck [5], the wash will increase the organic compounds and thus the congener levels resulting in the creation of extra flavors.

Longer aging does not necessarily make a better product. Imparting flavor using the aging-forward method means creating new flavors and transforming others as congeners evolve into other congeners at the end of the rum manufacturing process. That is, certain flavors and aromas are transferred from the wood to the rum while certain aromas are eliminated via evaporation. This is done by storing the rum in two hundred liter wooden barrels or casks that may be untreated, toasted or charred. American as well as European Oak is the preferred wood used today but other types like cherry, acacia, and chestnut as well as native wood like Jequitibá and Amburana in Brazil used in Cachaça, are also used. Many casks used to age rum have been previously used in the aging of other products like bourbon and brandy and wines like sherry or madeira. A rum aged for a year in a large wooden cask will have far less wood-extracted flavors than a rum aged for twelve or fifteen years in an ex-bourbon cask.

As stated above, distillation does not impart any flavor, it separates the components in the alcohol enabling the distiller to concentrate the desirable congeners and remove the undesirable ones through a heat process. In simplified terms, applying heat in the distillation process accelerates the evaporation of the different congeners in the wash, all of which have different boiling points. Heat is applied to the wash in a large kettle that has a thin neck at the top, as the temperature rises, compounds with lower boiling points rise to the neck wile all the others remain in the wash. Knowing in advance the boiling temperature of all the components in the wash, by measuring the temperature in the neck, the distiller can determine what compound is evaporating at any given temperature. Then, instead of letting the specific compound vapor drift off in the air, it travels from the neck to the lyne arm and then enters a long tube surrounded by cool water that returns the vapor to a liquid state collected in different receivers or vats.

As stated, components in the wash vaporize at different temperatures during the distillation process. Light alcohols like ethanol, which safe to consume and has a pleasant taste, vaporize early on while heavier alcohols like methanol that are not safe to consume vaporize later on in the process The liquids collected first are called heads, then the hearts follow and finally the last liquid to be collected is called the tails. Better distillers know the transition from head to hearts and from hearts to tails, being the hearts the desired final product. In very simple terms this is the process used in batch distillation using pot stills. Some distillers add the heads and tails to the wash in subsequent distillation runs raising its alcoholic strength and a higher alcohol yield. Some will simply collect enough tails to redistill on their own resulting in a richer rum.

However, most Caribbean rum distillers that use batch distillation use an evolution of the system stated above that enables the production of a spirit of higher alcohol strength using a vessel known as a retort. Basically, a retort is a vessel that acts like another pot still. Retorts are wide based, low profile cylindrical shaped container connected to the pot still. They are smaller than the pot still they are connected to partially filled with with non-hearts distillate from previous distillations. When retorts are used, the vapor from the lyne arm does not empty into a condenser, instead it is emptied at the bottom of the retort and bubbles up through the retort’s liquid boiling it. The vapor generated by the retort’s boiling liquid exits through a different neck then passes through the condenser to return to liquid form that has a higher ABV than that from a single pot still. Some Caribbean distillers use two retorts in sequence achieving final distillates with as high ABV as 75-80%. The majority of the pot stills used in the Caribbean today asre double retort pot stills, no other spirit uses double retort pot still to the extent that Caribbean rum distillers do.

Until the early 19th Century, all spirits were batch distilled using pot stills, a a slow labor intensive process that requires the the still to be emptied, cleaned and refilled before every distillation. In the early years of the 19th Century, several European inventors designed a new type of still utilizing one or more tall columns that would produce alcohol while being continuously fed with wash, hence the terms column still and continuous distillation. The better known of these inventions was made in 1830 by Irishman Aeneas Coffey who patented a twin column still that is widely used still today. In very simple terms, in the system designed by Coffey, the fermented wash enters at the top of the first column flowing down by gravity, while steam entered at the bottom of the column rises. When both meet, the wash heats up vaporizing the heavier congeners which are collected in a series of plates based on their volatility. Eventually, the vapor carrying the lighter congeners exits the top of the first column and enters the base of the second column where the process is repeated. In the second column, with no added steam, the vapor continues to rise encountering more liquid covered plates and the process is repeated. The first column is called the stripping column and the second column is called the rectifier.

As explained by Matt Pietrick and Carrie Smith in their book Modern Caribbean Rum, to operate continuously, the column’s outflow must match the inflow. Outflow happens in two ways: after the steam transfers ints energy to the descending wash in the first column, it becomes water, which falls to the bottom of the column and is removed. Likewise, liquid can be removed from one or more plates in the second column via valves, the liquid removed from the plates is the distillate. They continue to explain that the lowest plates in the second column, full of heavy congeners, is equivalent to the tails from a pot distillation. Likewise, the top plates are akin to the heads and somewhere between the two but near the top are the draw plates, the ideal plate or plates to draw off highly enriched ethanol and congeners of similar weight. A column still’s distillate can be as low as 65% ABV as is the one used to produce the more flavorful rhum agricole produced in Martinique or up to 95% ABV containing less flavor congeners as is the one traditionally known as light rum produced in Puerto Rico. In the French Caribbean islands the single column still used that typically distills at lower AV therefore producing a more flavorful distillates called a creole column still where the wash enters halfway up the column’s length which . Other places use multiple columns stills, sometime three to five columns though these are .

The type of still used in the distilling process imparts particular flavors, for example, Puerto Rican rum is exclusively distilled in column stills that produce a typically light flavored rum. Some Jamaican rums are distilled exclusively in pot stills that produce a stronger flavored rum. Rums from Barbados use a combination pot and column stills to produce a distillate that allows the manufacturer to produce medium bodied rums and adjust the flavor accordingly. Rum connoisseurs state that column stills are predominantly used in industrial scale rum production providing volume and consistency but no personal touch in the final product, while pot stills are used in batch processing that requires finesse and allows the producer to impart its own personality to the finished product.

A trait that rum connoisseurs look after is the use of added sugar and/or artificial coloring and flavors after the distillation process to make a mediocre product’s taste appealing. Except for fruit flavored or spiced rums, premium rums should have no additives. It is said that rum should be sampled, unlike wine which is tasted. When when judging a rum, there should be no special language like it is the case with wine when language like “hints of paprika and chocolate and undertones of lichee and banana“ for example is used. Rum should be judged not by subtle flavors often unnoticeable to the ordinary palate but by four main characteristics: color, bouquet, smoothness and after taste. Truly aged rum should have a soft honey-like color, should retains its bouquet almost indefinitely while a mediocre rum will lose its bouquet quickly because it comes from an artificial infusion, should go down smoothly and leave no rough aftertaste. It is normally believed that lower proof rums will be smoother and that any rum over 80˚ or 86˚ Proof cannot be smooth, however, that is a relative statement and not necessarily correct.

A page is herein dedicated to show recent photographs of actual and historic rum installations and a brief history of the current distilleries and non-distiller producers currently operating in Guyana and the main rum producing islands of the Caribbean. Excluded are producers in Central America (e.g. Nicaragua, Guatemala and Panama) and South America (e.g. Venezuela and Brazil) and islands like Bermuda and the Bahamas that though close to the Caribbean are on the Atlantic Ocean.

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[1] Wash is the finished product of fermentation destined to be distilled for the first time, it is essentially a low-alcohol “wine” produced from yeast fermenting sugar that serves as the base material destined for the first distillation.

[2] A still is an apparatus used to separate and concentrate alcohol from the wash by heating it to vaporize alcohol and cooling the vapors back into liquid, separating it from water and solids. The two main types are pot stills for batch production of flavorful spirits and column stills for high-proof, continuous production. Generally speaking, pot stills create richer and more flavorful spirits while column stills are preferred for more neutral spirits.

[3] Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, turning into vapor first.

[4] The "heart" of the distillation, or the spirit cut, is the cleanest, most desirable middle portion of a distillation run, collected after the heads and before the tails. It contains the highest concentration of ethanol and desirable flavors.

[5] A foul smelling mix of bacteria and acid used by very few mainly Jamaican distillers, not part of the wash but added to it after fermentation is completed but before distillation is begun to create more complex esters.