I ended up with 5 litres that had gone through the essencia carbon filter twice and another litre that had also been through the carbon filter twice that I put through the essencia again, this time with both the ceramic filter fitted too.
I also had 3 x 250ml jars, one was straight off the oaked rum, and one after each pass of the carbon filter.
The one straight off the oak smells the best, the most rum like, it tasted a bit a little sharp neat, but with coke it was quite smooth, not perfect but smells and tastes nice enough.
The second small jar after one pass of the carbon filter, when tasted neat was a little sharper than the unfiltered stuff, and had lost most of its rum smell, with coke it was actually not pleasant at all, can't describe the smell but it did put me off drinking the sample I made.
The third one that had been carbon filtered twice, had a much shaper taste neat, getting closer to sugar wash neutral, it didn't really smell much of rum, but tasted great with coke, SWMBO said it was just like Bacardi and coke, I liked it too but it was still not clean tasting enough that I would feel happy drinking a good few glasses of.
Now the stuff that was put through the essencia with the ceramic filter and carbon filter fitted, after already being carbon filtered twice, it's crystal clear doesn't really smell of much but does taste nice neat, not quite as sharp as the others and has a nice heat in the mouth feel, also with coke it is proper quaffable, for me at least it's a lovely smooth white rum when mixed with coke.
And I'll be surprised if I don't give the other 5 litres the full essencia treatment.
As it goes, I'm happy with my first rum experiment, im not a fan of dark spirits so going forward it'll be a case of refining the process, I used all 6 plates in my Baby Crystal Dragon and probably lost too much flavour during the spirit run, filtering does take some flavour away and the ceramic one certainly takes away most of the smell,
The washes I used were two consisting of 5 x 740gr jars of molasses and 3kg of Demerara sugar, plus a wash made from only Demerara sugar (6kg)
Next time I will use 3 or 4 washes, all with 5 jars of molasses and 3 kg of sugar but might swap some or all of the Demerara for white sugar.
As for running it, I'll strip to 30% and only use one plate (my SD Torpedo) during the spirit run to carry lots more flavour over, then oak it again for a month before a single pass of the essencia with both filters, so far so good, I'm happy with what I've made and have learned a lot
I remember making my first neutral and thinking how great is was, only to discover after some more experiance it was probably not too clever after all, so I'm looking forward to improving it and getting better results next time
Statistics: Posted by Anavrin — Fri Jul 10, 2015 10:28 pm
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