Collection: Buy rum

Before you can buy your favorite rum, several processes must be initiated. Rum production primarily requires sugarcane plants. The base product needed is either molasses, a byproduct of sugar production, or freshly pressed sugarcane juice. The molasses or sugarcane juice is fermented, and the resulting mash is then distilled one to two times. Finally, the distillate is stored, potentially blended with other rums, and bottled before you can purchase the finished rum. Have you already discovered our top-selling rums? Here you will find the most popular rums in our shop.

Sugar as the base ingredient

Sugarcane is the primary ingredient for rum. Depending on the soil conditions and climate, the plant grows for 9 to 24 months. The harvesting time depends on the sugar content of the sweet plant. This value is continuously measured. As soon as an optimal measurement is achieved, the sugarcane plant is cut either by hand or machine. Manual harvesting is of higher quality, as the sugarcane tops and leaves can be more carefully removed – ultimately allowing you to buy the best rum. In a special sugarcane mill, the juice is pressed from the sugarcane – some of it is further processed into sugar. For rum production, the resulting byproduct, molasses, is important, although for "Rhum Agricole," freshly pressed sugarcane juice is used. Since sugarcane regrows repeatedly without problems, the plantation can be harvested for up to 8 consecutive years. When you buy rum, you are therefore supporting a sustainable approach. To prevent the formation of bacteria at the cut surfaces of freshly harvested sugarcane, the harvest should be processed quickly.

During fermentation, sugar is converted into alcohol and carbon dioxide with the help of yeast. This is a crucial step because it is here that the foundation for the taste of the later spirit is laid. Yeast produces important flavor compounds, aldehydes and esters, during the fermentation process. That's why it makes sense not to rely on the quality of ready-made industrial yeast, but to choose from a selection of 700 different yeast strains and cultivate your own. We want you to be able to buy only the highest quality rums. The duration of fermentation also plays a decisive role in flavor development. With turbo yeast, which is mainly used in industrial production, the fermentation process takes only a few hours. When using your own yeast strains, the process is only complete after seven days. Since a lot of heat is generated during the conversion of sugar, the fermentation must be constantly monitored. Excessively high temperatures can lead to the death of the yeast and thus cause a premature end to fermentation. A weak mash would result, which could only be processed into an inferior rum. However, nobody wants to buy bad rum. For this reason, an open vat or a closed system is used in which the molasses can be fermented. A constant temperature of 30 degrees Celsius must be maintained here. An advantage of the closed vat is the longer fermentation time. Unfortunately, this cannot be well controlled in the closed vat. In the open vat, the situation is exactly the opposite.

With an alcohol content of 6 to 10%, the sugar wine produced during fermentation still has too little alcohol content. When you buy rum, the alcohol content is at least 37.5%. This only changes with distillation and the associated dehydration. Pot stills in a typical pot shape or column stills/Coffey stills in a column shape are used as stills. The same basic principle applies to both processes: water only boils at 100 degrees Celsius, while alcohol already boils at 78.3 degrees Celsius. The fermented liquid is heated until the alcohol evaporates, condenses, and returns to a liquid state. This process alone creates a very high-proof distillate. To further increase the alcohol content, rum is often double distilled. Due to the different boiling points of water and alcohol, desired aromas can be specifically distilled out and others separated. In this way, a wide variety of rums are created, so that everyone can buy a rum that suits their personal preferences. Foreshots and feints are separated from the heart, with the heart being used for rum production.

It is only through aging that the distillate becomes rum. The spirit is stored in barrels and, depending on the barrel, matures into a brown or white rum. People who buy rum usually tend to prefer one or the other – depending on their taste. If the distillate is stored in a steel tank or a wooden barrel, white rum is produced. The aging period lasts at least three months. If the rum acquires a brownish color, it is then filtered with charcoal to achieve the desired white color again. Rum gets its typically brown color from aging in oak barrels. These barrels contain the two substances sugar and vanillin, which are activated by charring or "toasting" the barrels and are transferred into the rum during storage. The knowledge that aging plays a major role in the quality of rum also comes from the Royal Navy. It was found that rum rations at the end of longer sea voyages tasted significantly better than at the beginning of the journey. This knowledge is now specifically applied to rum production so that you can buy the most intense and delicious rum possible. For example, aging in wooden barrels ensures the exchange with fresh air, and the climatic conditions in the storage room can contribute to the maturation.

Matured rum is still a long way from what the consumer will later find in the bottle. The task of the Master Blender is to blend the rum from the various barrels in such a way that the result ultimately exactly matches the desired taste. The challenge here is that each barrel has its own individual taste characteristics, and this requires a lot of intuition and experience from the Master Blender. The blender's sensitivity is also necessary for the creation of new rum varieties. Rum connoisseurs are often interested in buying rum they don't yet know and are open to new experiences, provided they are of good quality. The counterpart to blends are so-called single casks. A single cask rum comes from a single barrel and is bottled without further blending. With these rarities, the Master Blender does not have a hand in it. What the rum connoisseur finds here is a specialty whose taste is due to nature. People who buy this rum want to enjoy the purity of the respective variety. A special blending method is, for example, the so-called Solera process. Here, young rum varieties are stored above older ones and also mixed with them. The end product, the Solera Blend, is taken from the Soleras, the wooden barrels stored at the very bottom. The age here is determined by the youngest component of the assemblage. This creates a unique mixture of rums of all ages. If you buy such a rum, you will receive a rum with a very special note.