How to Make Rum

Co-authored by Mimi Perryman

Last Updated: May 24, 2024 Approved

Rum has been produced in the Caribbean since the 17th century. This spirit is traditionally made with sugarcane juice, molasses, or brown sugar and just takes 4-10 days to make at home. To make your own rum, dissolve sugar and molasses in hot water. Then, add yeast and let the solution ferment to convert the sugar into alcohol. As the final step, distill the rum by heating the liquid and siphoning it into a still.

Prep time: 4-6 weeks
Yield: Approximately 2-3 L (0.5 - 0.8 gallons) rum

Ingredients

2.5 kg (5.5 lbs) molasses
2.5 kg (5.5 lbs) processed sugar
20 L (5.2 gal) distilled water
42.5g (1.5 ounces )hydrated yeast
Additional distilled water to dilute the final solution

Part 1

Part 1 of 4:

Making the Mash

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1
Begin by placing 20 L of water in a clean boiler. The operative word is clean. The slightest bit of contamination can spoil the rum. Before you start, make sure you're dealing with the cleanest ingredients and a sanitary area.
- Clean and then submerge any utensils you will be using in boiling water. Turn the heat off the boiling water and soak your pot or barrel in the near-boiling water. Then dump the water. This will help kill off any potentially harmful germs.
The sugar will dissolve easily, but the molasses will be tougher dissolve, as it is very sticky. Try not to boil the water. Continue to let it heat up until bubbles just start to form, and then turn the burner off.

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You may find it helpful to take out about 1 liter of the mash in a jug first; try dissolving the yeast in the smaller jug. Then, when the mixture begins to foam up, incorporate with the rest of the wort.

Part 2

Part 2 of 4:

Fermentation

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1
Allow solution to ferment at 25° C (77° F) until the airlock on your pot stops bubbling. The yeast needs heat to keep converting sugar to alcohol. So be sure to store the wash in a warm place or keep the room artificially heated. The airlock on the pot will let the carbon dioxide out without letting oxygen in. It should take about 24 - 48 hours for the airlock to stop bubbling.
- The airlock is a really important piece of the fermentation process. You can make an airlock yourself pretty easily, or you can buy one inexpensively.
- Either way, be sure the airlock fits well and doesn't let additional air into the container. Why is it important that no air gets into the wash? The yeast feeds on oxygen from the sugar molecules, leaving ethyl alcohol behind (and spitting out carbon dioxide). If the yeast has a continuous supply of oxygen to eat, it won't be effective scavenging the oxygen from the sugar molecules.
You can use a hydrometer to test when the mash is ready. Hydrometers measure the ratio of a density of a liquid to the density of water. Measure once a day starting on the day when your mash should be finished. Take a bit of mash out of the container and put it into a graduated cylinder. Float the hydrometer into the cylinder, gently swirling the cylinder to release any bubbles. When you get the same reading on the hydrometer for three days straight, your wash is ready to distill.
3
Knock your yeast down by lowering the temperature. At this point, your yeast may still be on the surface of your wash. Allowing the yeast to enter the still during distillation will cause bad smells and flavors.^{[1]
X
Research source} To knock the yeast down to the bottom of the mash, you should move your mash to a cool place — ideally, 10° - 14° C (50° - 57° F) — and wait up to two days. At this point, you can siphon your wash directly into the still or rack it and save a part of the yeast for another batch in the refrigerator.

Part 3

Part 3 of 4:

Distillation

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It's very important that all connections are tightly sealed and fit well.
You want a water source to cool the alcohol vapor. As the alcohol vapor cools, it condenses into liquid ethanol. This will then drip from the condenser into a collection vessel.
3
Now siphon the solution into the still. Be sure to siphon the mash carefully, avoiding the bottom, where the yeast collected.
- A siphon is a tube or conduit bent into legs of unequal length, for use in drawing a liquid from one container into another on a lower level. Siphoning works by placing the shorter leg into the container above and the longer leg into the one below. The liquid is forced up the shorter leg and into the longer leg by the pressure of the atmosphere.
For rum, a slow boil is best; no need to crank it up. Begin running cold water once the solution reaches between 50-60°C (122-140 °F). The solution will start distilling when clear drops of liquid start to exit the spout into the collection vessel.
5
Discard the first 100mL (3.38 fl. ounces) of clear liquid. This is called the "heads," and is routinely discarded for safety precautions. The heads contains volatile methanol, which can be lethal if ingested. Better to be safe than sorry, especially when you're distilling three liters of spirit.
Stop collecting once temperature reached 96 °C (204.8 °F).

Part 4

Part 4 of 4:

Finishing off the Rum

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1
Age your rum in oak barrels or toasted oak (optional). Often, rum is aged in toasted oak barrels for 10 years or longer to add depth of flavor and color. If you don't have the luxury of a toasted oak barrel, or 10 years' time, you can safely soak your rum in toasted oak chips for three weeks to impart a signature taste. Filter your rum through a cheesecloth or clean cotton shirt to catch any of the wood particles.
Depending on the reflux still, your undiluted rum can be up to 95% alcohol, which is dangerously strong for consumption. Use a dilution calculator to bring your rum down to around 45% for the best taste experience.
Make spiced rum by adding cinnamon, ginger, and cloves to the final rum mixture, soaking for 1 - 2 weeks. Some choose to add a small amount of caramelized sugar to the rum.

Community Q&A

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Question

Is it possible to set up a still with a keg made of aluminum?

Community Answer

This is not advised, as the aluminium can release chemicals that may alter the taste of the rum and ultimately spoil the batch.

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Question

Do I leave the water running or just fill the airlock? Found this bit confusing.

Robert Roberts

Community Answer

Airlocks only need a small amount of water to work, just enough to allow the carbon dioxide to pass through, but for no air to pass back. A good homemade airlock can be made from a condom or a balloon with a few small pinholes. As they swell, CO2 is released, and as the deflate, they self-seal, preventing air from passing back.

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Question

After the wash is ready for distillation, can I empty it out of the container into a separate still, or should it be distilled in the current vessel?

Community Answer

It's up to you, but I suggest you leave it in the same vessel. Moving it may compromise the alcohol content.

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Tips

Moonshine is not particularly known for its taste, although if you do achieve 95% solution it should be relatively flavorless - see Neutral Spirits. It will mellow considerably when aged in a stainless steel drum (steel drums are the norm for white rum or some spiced rums, oak casks for gold/spiced rums, and a charred oak cask for dark rum, but cask-based aging is a bit of a science in itself). Almost all liquors are aged for 1-2 years (a notable exception being corn whiskey, which may be flavored with sweet corn juice), and many for considerably longer. Filtration through charcoal can also help remove distasteful impurities, although this process is typically used for vodka, not rum.

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Common flavorings used in rums are: coconut extract (clear), sugar cane juice. One common (and perhaps overall the most common) to all but white flavored rums is molasses. A flavoring in gold and spiced rum is often caramel. Spiced rum may have cinnamon extract (certainly tiny amounts), or honey. Another possibility for Haitian-inspired rums might also include tiny amounts of mace extract and/or the flowers of basil.

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Yeast for making alcohols will not produce methanol. But other bacteria in the air and environment may contaminate the batch (although they are not common in all regions). A clean working environment, sterile gloves and containers for source materials, and pure source materials are essential to ensuring the safety of the batch. Thorough cleaning of the still (even dry sterilization) between uses is essential. Professional production may go so far as to replace the air in the still and aging vat with nitrogen (inert, and a flame retardant) to further limit risks — but this is not a cheap or easy thing to do at home. Tossing the early part of the batch has more to do with getting rid of unwanted flavors, but in professional settings this is still lost (in fact considerably more is lost) through safe preheating near but not up to the boiling point of ethanol (~80% .. about 60C) while still in the aging tank (and open to air to allow the material to escape).

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Warnings

Distilling alcohol yourself is both illegal (in the USA) and a potential health hazard if performed incorrectly. For this reason it is recommended that this instruction set be used solely for educational purposes.

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