Just heard about a new, apparently boutique offering called "Smoke and Oakums Gunpowder Rum". The website is a roughshod, very amateur one page website, coded crudely and looking just as bad.
The producer makes this claim:
Social history in a bottle? Death maybe."Smoke & Oakum's Gunpowder Rum is a one man operation, making small batch blended rum infused with tobacco, chillies and actual muzzle-loader style black gunpowder. Each bottle is hand-labelled and bottled, with each bottle being unique..."
"Smoke & Oakum's Gunpowder Rum is an attempt to recreate and bring to you the taste of a rum not seen since the age of sail. Full-flavoured and entirely a product of it's times, it is social history in a bottle."
The infusion of tobacco in spirits is a subject well addressed here and elsewhere. The bottom line is simply that such infusions are very suspect and very likely quite harmful to the drinker, with massive amounts of nicotine - far beyond that of simply smoking - being consumed in short order. Adding "black gunpowder" to the mix sounds even worse.
But let's be fair.
In that spirit, I emailed the producer:
Personally I am shocked that such a rum would be approved for safe consumption and sale, but I'll hold my fire until I get a response. Stay tuned...Your Smoke and Oakums Gunpowder rum, based on an 18th century recipe intrigues us. Our questions:
1. Age and Proof?
2. How is the rum produced (batch, column)?
3. How are the tobacco, chillies and black gunpowder infused? How much tobacco/gunpowder are in a bottle of it?
4. Did you have any problems getting this rum approved (especially with tobacco and gunpowder, regulated substances)? How did you go about insuring it is safe to drink?
