In addition to being one of my favorite spirits, Rum is one of the easiest for the beginning home distiller to make. To make rum there isn’t a complicated mashing process, you just need to heat the ingredients, mix them up and pitch your yeast.
Before getting to the recipe we need to talk about one thing, Dunder and Muck.
What is Dunder and Muck
Dunder and Muck are what give Jamaican Rum it’s funky fruity flavors and aromas.
Dunder is backset or stillage, the leftover wash in a still after distillation, that has been to add into the next run. If you are coming from the whiskey or moonshine world, this is basically the same as sour mashing. While adding backset can add to the flavor profile, muck is where the real “magic” happens.
You may have heard stories of Jamaican rum distilleries that throw dead bats and goats into their muck pits, while I can’t verify any of these stories, the use of muck and dunder is definitely real. Muck is created by leaving the dunder collected from the still in large open vats. While in these vats the dunder can collect and grow forms of wild yeast and bacteria that through a process called esterification create those fun fruity flavors we all love. Unfortunately, some of those compounds like Butyric Acid smell like vomit before combining with ethanol during distillation to result in a delicious pineapple flavor.
How to make you own Muck Pit at home
If you want to replicate some of those funky flavors you can make your own muck pit like I did using a fermentation bucket.
Building the Pit
First, I added an additional tap about ½ way up the bucket. This allows me to pull off the liquid without disturbing anything growing on the top or settled to the bottom of the bucket.
The other change I made was to cut a hold and glue a screen to the lid of the bucket. This allows air to move in and out of the bucket while keeping bugs and critters out.
Starting the Process
The process of distilling rum sanitizes the wash so we need to add something back in to get the process going. Fill your “muck pit” about 2/3 of the way up with dunder. Then to get mine going I added a little molasses and threw in some banana peels and old fruit. This was enough to start the process going. Then just add some fresh dunder back in after each run to keep the level up. If you don’t see any bubbling or growth on the top try adding some more fruit or a little more sugar of some type and give it some time.
Of course, you won’t have any of this for your first batch of rum, but that’s ok. Let’s get started on that first batch.
Rum Wash Recipe
Rum is typically made with molasses, but all molasses isn’t the same.
As sugar is refined one of the byproducts is molasses and depending on where the molasses is collected in the process there are differences in the flavor and sugar content.
The different types of molasses provide differences in the flavor of the rum you produce. I have tried several variations and settled on a combination of both Fancy and Blackstrap in my recipe.
Fancy vs Blackstrap Molasses
Fancy or Baking Molasses:
This is the type of molasses typically used in baking. It is collected early in the process of refining sugar so it has a lighter flavor, higher moisture and sugar content.
Blackstrap Molasses:
This type of molasses is collected later in the refining process after more of the sugar has been stripped out. It has a stronger, more bitter and salty flavor, is thicker and has a lower sugar content.
Rum Ingredients
This recipe will make an 18-gallon batch with a SG of about 1.070. That’s about right for my 20-gallon fermenter and 2 stripping runs in my still. Feel free to scale it up or down to fit your equipment.
- Water, 13.5 Gallons
- Blackstrap Molasses, 1 Gallon
- Fancy (Baking) Molasses, 2 Gallons
- Backset, 1 quart
- Dunder or Muck, 1 gallon (added after fermentation has started)
- Epsom Salt, 1 Tablespoon
- Fermaid Yeast Nutrient, 2 Tablespoons
- Multivitamin Tablet, 3 tablets
- Yeast, 1.5 Tablespoons each of DADY and Red Star Bread Yeast
Making the Rum Wash
Molasses is very thick and sticky, but heating it up will help it flow and mix much easier. I fill a sink or large container with some hot water and put the molasses jugs in to warm up.
- Add about 4 gallons of warm water to the fermenter.
- Add molasses stirring after each gallon.
- Use hot water to rinse all the molasses from the jugs dumping it into the fermenter.
- If you have backset from a previous batch add that now.
- Add hot or cold water as needed to bring volume to 17 gallons at 80-90 degrees F.
- Check the starting gravity with a hydrometer. You should be a little over 1.070 after correcting for temperature.
- Add yeast nutrient, crushed multivitamin tablets, epsom salts and both types of yeast.
- Stir well to mix in yeast and add some oxygen to the wash (use a mixer on a drill if you have one).
- Put the lid on and airlock if you have one, you can also keep this open to ferment with just a cloth or towel keep bugs out and allow it to vent.
- Store the fermenter in a warm place at least 70 degrees, or insulate and add an aquarium heater.
- After 24hrs add 1 gallon of dunder. If you do not have dunder skip this step.
- Allow the wash to ferment for about a week and check the final gravity. Molasses contains some unfermentable sugars so you might be a little above 1.000 even after fermentation has finished.
- Allow another few days for the wash to “clear” before running.
Distilling your Rum
I have tried several ways of running this recipe, single pass, double distilling and using a column with a bubble plate.
My favorite method has been a double distillation with stripping run and spirit run. This also works great with the large batch size I suggested above because it makes the perfect amount of wash for 2 stripping runs and then 1 spirit run in my still.
If you want to get it done in a single run, I suggest using a single bubble plate with a column packed with some copper mesh. This cleans up some of the funkiness and boosts the proof off the still to very closely match the results from a double distillation.
More some more information on different methods of running your still check out this article about single vs double distillation or Lesson 4 in the beginner series about your first stripping and spirit runs.
Let me know what you think
Did you try the recipe? How did you run it?
Let me know if you have any questions or tips on how you like to make rum. This website is all about helping other home distillers so share your tips and experiences I the comments below!