A mentioned above the distiller must judge when to make the cuts during distillation so controlling what congeners are retained and discarded. Some stills are very simple, while others have devices which allow the distiller more control. Next follows the desirable part of the run, 'the cut', as the alcohol level of the distillate collected starts to fall, and the 'low wines' or 'tails' arrive and are set aside. As in Cognac and Scotland it is usual for pot still rums to be double distilled - put through the pot still twice with the distillate collected from the first distillation producing a distillate with an alcohol strength in the low twenties and the second distillation typically being over 70% alc./vol.. The Scottish rum recipe is based on the Sea Shanty ‘wellermen’ song which talks about ‘sugar and tea and rum’. The sugar found on your supermarket shelf, whether white or brown was produced from sugar cane juice and regardless of its end colour was originally brown - white sugar is the result of a further industrial process.

Rum can also be made from cane syrup, made by boiling cane juice to remove some of its water content. ('Fancy molasses' is a term for 'inverted sugar' syrup where sucrose has been converted to glucose and fructose with acid or enzymes.) Sugar extraction The still is charged with the wash and then heat is applied to bring to the boil. The volatile 'high wines' or 'heads' will be given off first and set aside. These are undesirable compounds, partly due to being tainted as these first vapours effectively clean the still from the previous distillation.By far the majority of rums are produced from molasses - known as 'rhum traditional', but also sometimes rather unkindly described by producers of rhum agricole as 'rhum industriel' (industrial rum). Whatever sugar cane derivative base ingredient is chosen (molasses, cane juice or cane syrup) this is fermented with water and cultured (almost always) or naturally occurring yeast to produce a beer like 'wash' of 5-10% alc./vol.. The resulting 'wash' can then be distilled to make rum. Revenge’ has been distilled in Orkney and then aged in ex-bourbon and virgin oak casks for three years. Losses in volume to due evaporation are also more exaggerated in hotter climates (around 6% per year as opposed to 3% in Scotland) and high humidity can mean an almost equal loss between alcohol and water, meaning that although the volume is lost the strength remains fairly constant. To prevent casks destined for extended ageing from gradually emptying over the years, it is common for casks to be topped up with rum from other casks in same batch. Thus, you might start with ten casks of rum from a particular batch and ten years later be left with only five casks. Charcoal filtration of rum

The pH of the molasses will also affect fermentation and ideally will be in a range between 4.4 to 4.6 and this may be adjusted but the addition of the acidic residue (lees) left in the still after an earlier distillation. Dunder is the term given to lees which have been left in open dunder pits to concentrate the ester content and the acetic/butyric acids. Light or heavy rumFor beginners, this is a great rum to have with a nice cola and a slice of lime - it's refreshing and very moreish.

In practice distillation is a lot more complex with numerous variables affecting the final distillate produced - mainly the different boiling points of the various different kinds of alcohol and their particular flavour compounds. The skill of the distiller is to use the distillation process to separate and collect the alcohols and flavour compounds (congeners) wanted in the finished rum. Like all distillates, regardless of whether they are distilled in pot or column stills, all rums are clear when they condense after distillation. Colour in rum is the result of ageing in oak casks (and also the possible addition of caramel colour). White rum can simply be a sugar cane distillate watered down and bottled. It is common for caramel to be added to aged rums to 'correct' the colour, and lets be honest, often to darken the colour so potentially giving the rum an older appearance. Conversely, some aged rums are charcoal filtered to remove any colour and are bottled completely clear. So with rum what you see is not necessarily what you get.The BrewDog Distilling Company is charged with a single mission; to challenge perceptions of what a spirit can be. This is done with a meticulous eye for detail and an approach born of non-compromise – meaning everything is done under one roof, from scratch. Nothing is rushed. For a case in point we unveil their incredible hand-made rum Five Hundred Cuts – which took six months and thirty-five recipes to uncover. But their work has been very much worth it. Additives used to boost a rum's flavour include prune wine, chaptalized fruit juice, boisse, sugar, spice and flavourings. As for age statements, in many cases they are just that, statement and not fact. In the case of the best producers and regulated markets, these age statements (rightly) represent the age of the youngest rum in the blend. Others portray the average age of the rums in the blend and some are simply meaningless. Bottling rum INDEPENDENT, FAMILY-OWNED, SUSTAINABLE DISTILLERY– Family-owned, Diplomático has been producing the highest quality rums from a combination of sugar cane honey and molasses since 1959. Diplomático controls its production process from field to bottle with a care for the local environment and people and has been awarded for its sustainable distillery

Molasses are so rich in nutriment that the yeast needs to be propagated and slowly introduced to progressively higher concentrations of molasses as its cell numbers increase. It is typical for rum distillers to talk about three or four-step fermentation in reference to the number of ever larger vessels used between propagation and the fermenters. The type of yeast used varies tremendously from country to country and distiller to distiller. This can be commercially cultured yeast or natural ambient yeast found on the leaves of the sugar cane. Aberdeen-based Ardent Spirits, an independent bottling company, recently launched an exclusive ‘Sea Shanty rum’ with proceeds going to Aberdeen RNLI. Orkney distillery J. Gow Rum recently added a three-year-old cask aged pot still rum to its core range. In rum making one of the common additions to pot stills are retorts. The distillate from the pot still is directed into the first of two retorts, a copper chamber filled with low wines from the previous distillation diluted with water (to approx 50% alc./vol.). The hot vapour causes the liquid in the 'low wine retort' to boil and so concentrate the strength of the vapour which then moves on the second retort. This is filled with high wines from the previous distillation, again diluted with water but to a higher strength. As in the first retort, the vapour causes the liquid to boil and the alcohol strength of the vapour is boosted a second time.

The fact that ageing in oak barrels improves the raw rum was discovered when ships carried rum on the long passage to Europe, it arrived darker in colour and with an improved flavour. This botanical rum recently won a silver medal at the London Spirits Competition and is from Cabezon Beverage, a Scottish craft spirit company. Pot stills are the simplest and the original type of still. Extensively they are glorified copper kettles - indeed in some countries such as the Netherlands even call them 'kettles' rather than stills. These are the kind of stills used in Scotland to make malt whisky and France to make cognac. This unaged rum is pot distilled from sugar cane molasses in Scotland by Dumfries-based Ninefold Distillery.