Hey Everyone My regular supplier of Panela is out of stock and I'm looking for another source.  Looking for full pallet quantities shipped to South Florida. Preferably granulated.  Any suggestions would be appreciated. Cheers ..read more

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with changing the pH of a wash before distillation. Either lower of higher and did this have an effect on the final product?   ..read more

 Hello, I’m in the process of distilling a %100 blackstrap molasses rum. I’ve done a lot of small 30 gallon fermentations and seemed very successfull. Using backseat(dunder) and infected fermentation or muck pits? Infected backset. My biggest questions are what’s the most important? Brix level? Or starting gravity, amount of sugar? Is it the ph level? 4.5-5 to start? My goal is to ferment for 3 weeks. Then strip and spirit run. I am using a 100 gallon pot still.     My last ferment yielded 60 gallons at 25.5 proof. Does this sound right? Can I be doing something more effici ..read more

He have some unaged rum that is lightly oaked, then some caramel added (just burnt sugar) which goes out the door cheaply. We have noticed an astringent aftertaste that develops AFTER bottling. The start on the palate is good, but has a terrible finish that wasn't there on the day of packaging. We had one customer who bought some back from a batch and their flavour had developed enormously (within 2 weeks) compared to the bottles left in the store. All 6 of their bottles had the same character, but the bottles we had here had far less, though still some, of the offensive flavour. I would descr ..read more

Hi, I've fermented 300l of mollases wash to ~12% abv and I only got around 25l of distillate. I am a home distiller and I am curious why i didn't get more of it. Are there any equations that would help me to know how much distillate should I get? Im a newbie to the forum ..read more

Hi All, I just distilled distilled my first batch of rum. I was doing the stripping run and noticed a smell (not so much taste) of burnt sugar. Wasn't the sweet smell of caramelization. My molasses based batch fermented to 1.016 and I and wondering if there were too many sugars left over from the ferment which caused this. Another possibility is that I heated the still too fast and the sugars burnt. I wondering if anyone else has dealt with this before and any suggestions people might have. Thanks in advance ..read more

Dear distillers,   As we gonna try to distillate rum for the first time, I need some advices. For the first run i don't know what kind of heat is the best. We are working with a big copper pot (100Hl/2641 gallons). And for the second run it's only 25Hl (660 gallons). When we distill wine, we start at the maximun power, and reduce the power when the swan neck temperature comes to 71 degree celsius (1 hour to decrease). And when the heads are finish we increase the power in for 4 steps. When we distill wash, we do a more progressive heat. We reduce the power when the swan neck comes to 45 ..read more

Anyone using dunder in their rums want to share how old of dunder they use? Here is my process that has been working great, but just curious about over all age. Have an old 5 barrel conical from our sister brewery. Filled with dunder from out first rum run, July 2020. Since then every batch we make I use enough dunder to drop my pH to where I want it. After stripping, I let the dunder cool and top my "pit" back up. It works great and the flavor seems deeper and more complex each time, but I started to think what others are doing vs my "solera" style dunder   ..read more

This goes out to all the guys making rum with dunder. Has anyone used raw limestone to balance the ph? I've used oyster shells but was also wondering if you could use any shells picked up off the beach?     ..read more

I thought I'd use the hive mind for this question -  We have a client that wants a very specific blend of our rums.  It is 97% fresh column rum and 3% rum aged 3 years.  The resulting blend has a very nice aroma and flavor profile that they approved, but after approval, they asked if we can de-color as it does have a yellow-gold color.  Well, the client is always right so... We used our activated carbon filter and gravity filtered the blend.  It took 3 passes, but the resulting liquid was as clear as water (and very smooth).  While the customer was happy with the ..read more