"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—
...Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
...Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
Today, August 16th, is both National and International Rum Day!!
What goes with rum? Pirates and hangovers, for sure. Captain Jack Sparrow was completely aghast at Miss Elizabeth torching the rum in an effort to be rescued from being marooned on a remote Island in Pirates of the Caribbean. Who can blame him?
The high sugar content can also make for some booming hangovers. Mixed with fruit juices to make sweet, delicious, porch pounding, beverages and the hangovers from rum based concoctions can be epic. Yes, a Pina Colada can be sweet, and easy drinking, but guzzlers beware. Tourists on some Caribbean islands could deservedly be mistaken for a Zombie following a night of amateurish rum overindulgence. As with all things, moderation is recommended.
The first distillation of rum as we now know it was by European colonizers around the mid-1600's on a Caribbean Island. Sugar was the Caribbean’s highest-valued export.
African slaves worked in brutally hot conditions on sugar plantations harvesting sugarcane and boiling sugarcane juice to make crude sugar crystals. The boiled juice made foam scum, "skimmings", which was removed as waste. The coarse sugar crystals were coated with molasses which drained off the cooling crystals and was collected.
Many plantations used the sugary waste to make rum. Skimmings, molasses, and occasionally, juice from rotting sugarcane went into a vat where airborne yeast kicked off fermentation. After roughly a week the resulting product was twice distilled in crude pot stills.
Back then the idea of aging the concoction to smooth it out wasn't a consideration. They needed the barrels for shipping actual sugar.
Today's rum is not your father's, or your great, great, great, grandfather's rum. Much has changed in the last 15 to 20 years. Craft cocktail bartenders and mixologists began insisting on rum styles used in classic recipes. This demand has expanded rum distilling immensely. Much like the demand for small batch and hard to find bourbon, committed rum fans are also willing to pay hundreds of dollars for single-cask releases. T
To make your own Mojito, or other rum cocktail for National Rum Day, see the cocktail recipe links on our website. The IBA and Difford's guides links will provide you ample options. I believe Difford's alone has 931 rum drink recipes.
So gather round today with friends, tell tales of debauchery from the high seas, and enjoy some rum!!
Cheers!!
Comentários