Cane is able... part one

For officers only! Relevent history and facts about the growing, harvesting, fermentation, distillation and aging of Cane Spirits. Master this section and you master rum. Otherwise just masterbate...
Post Reply
User avatar
Capn Jimbo
Rum Evangelisti and Compleat Idiot
Posts: 3550
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:53 pm
Location: Paradise: Fort Lauderdale of course...
Contact:

Cane is able... part one

Post by Capn Jimbo »

From grass to glass...


Oddly enough, I came very close to naming this section "From Grass to Glass", but simply didn't. Too cutesy, and half my friends would be tempted to smoke their rum if I did, lol...

But Luis Ayala had no such compunctions. Back to grass, er cane...

Sugar cane is the basis for anything you want to call rum. Or aguardiente (de cana), cachaca, clarin et al. There are a few among us who'd like to believe that sugar cane - like wine - exhibits "terroir" (tear - wah'), or a sense of place. Trust me, there are experts who can taste a grape or wine and tell you with a couple of miles from where it was grown. As for cane...

No way.

What we call rum can be made from anything "sugar" - fresh squeezed cane juice, slightly thickened cane juice, cane juice honey, table or "A" grade (first boil) molasses, "B" grade (2nd boiling) or most often "C" grade or Black Strap molasses (from which all profitable sugar has been extracted). Technically, rum can even be made from various forms of sugar: from panela loaves, to crude sugar, brown suger - even from refined white table sugar (a favorite of moonshiners)

The leftover "bagasse" (crushed cane) is used as fuel to run the distillery and to create steam, to make paper, to print newpapers (The Hindu Times), to feed cattle, to provide heat in rural homes, and even to produce electricity in large power plants. Cane can also be used to distill fuel ethanol for cars (Brazil).

It's really hard to identify just what's the byproduct.

Keep in mind that with the exception of cachaca (which Martinique shills love to reject), that probably 95% of what you loosely call "rum" is produced by one particular byproduct of producing sugar, namely molasses. And in general, "rum" is not distilled from the best table grade, first boiled molasses, but from grungy old, last boil Blackstrap Molasses.

This is the thick, dark and bitter molasses that ends up being fed to animals, or even used to coat dusty roads. Black Strap has enough sugar to ferment, but not a crystal more. After fermentation and distillation even the residue may be recycled (as dunder for a subsequent fermentations, or again, as feed or fertilizer.).

But the notion of terroir is just plain silly, despite what you may hear from hardcore Shillery monkeys.


Exploding another myth:


Let's get the cane juice thing right, once and for all. The Preacher wants you to believe that the only cane juice rums are his butt kissed "Rhum Agricoles AOC Martinique".

That is just plain, simple, unadulterated pure bullshit.

First of all "rhum agricole" is simply the French term for rums made from "cane juice". The English term is simply "cane juice rum". Cane juice rums (aka rhum agricole for French speakers) have been around for going on 200 years. The AOC label was simply invented about 1996. As a matter of further hypocrisy, the term "rhum agricole" was first applied by the French - not to the cane juice rums of Martinique - but to the cane juice based "clarin" produced in Haiti. This original French usage was intended as a term of derogation, and implied the Haitian clairin was nothing more than a barnyard product.

It is an absolutlely delicious contradiction that 150 years later the term somehow superceded itself to be used as a positive, with "rhum industriell" (industrial rum) now becoming the negative. And it was not until the early 1990's that the now haughty "rhum agricole", having been entirely eclipsed by molasses based rums, became "Rhum Agricole AOC Martinique", in yet another completely invented, French marketing term and a cheap attempt designed to exclude and denigrate other cane juice rums...

Particularly those of Haiti.

Of particular note are the amazing Barbancourt cane juice rums, all of which have earned top ratings. The Five Star especially is truly a world class rum, and is an honest work of art. France will never forget that Haiti was the first and only country whose slaves successfully revolted against their empire - Napolean then took every means possible to impoverish and punish Haiti, and to his eternal shame, succeeded. Likewise Barbancourt will never stoop to labeling their cane juice rum with the dreaded and once condescending French term of "rhum agricole".

And neither will I. And that, my fellow idiots, is the real story.
Post Reply