How many rums do I need?

[Kent Wang]

For mixing purposes, how many rums do I need?

I figure only one white rum, so Flor De Cana for me.

For dark rums, maybe I need three or four. I see recipes that call for Bermuda, Virgin Islands, Demerara, and all these different types; so instead of stocking each one of these, can I just substitute some of them?

Between the dark rums, can I have just three rums, categorized as light, medium, and dark? Maybe:

light: Flor de Cana

medium: Gosling's Black Seal

dark: Cruzan Blackstrap

[mkayahara]

At the risk of sounding flippant, I would say it depends entirely on what you're planning to use them for. If you're looking to make a full range of tiki drinks then, by all accounts, you can't really substitute, since the genius of tiki drinks lies in the way they blend a wide array of different rums.

If you're just looking to make a handful of other rum-based drinks, though, my recommendation would be a white rum (I like Havana Club, but I realize this presents some problems for US residents); an aged, lighter-bodied rum (I like Mount Gay Eclipse or Cruzan Estate Diamond); an amber Jamaican rum (Appleton V/X); and a dark rum (I would slot Gosling's Black Seal in here, though there are some great Jamaican offerings for this category). The only rum I feel like I'm missing from my liquor cabinet right now is a Demerara, so I can't speak to whether or not it's actually necessary to stock it!

[Chris Amirault]

And then there's rhum agricole. And then there's overproof rums. And then there's....

[thirtyoneknots]

And then there's rhum agricole. And then there's overproof rums. And then there's....

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Yeah if you like swizzles, something white and either overproof (Wray & Nephew) or agricole-ish (10 Cane is your best bet in Texas, afaik).

I don't think of Goslings as a particularly "medium" style of rum, if I were to have only one it would probably either Mt. Gay Eclipse or Cruzan Single Barrel. Here's where you run into problems inherent to rum choices though: a taste of them, it doesn't even have to be side-by-side, will reveal pretty radically different characters. Personally I keep both on hand (and many others) and would, broadly speaking, use the Mt. Gay for a recipe in a Jeff Berry or Gary Regan book, and the Cruzan in any appropriate recipe from Imbibe! (for example--it makes an epic milk punch)

I might give the Cruzan an edge for being so wonderfully sippable, but if you're serious about rum (and why wouldn't you be?) you can't really substitute them. Unfortunate, but that's my $.02

[jmfangio]

And then there's rhum agricole. And then there's overproof rums. And then there's....

←

And this is why, aside from the occasional Hemingway Daiquiri or Mojito, I have yet to seriously venture into rum based drinks. I'm self aware enough to know that I'll become obsessed about finding the perfect rum for each drink, that I'll probably bankrupt myself in the process.

Edited February 5, 2009 by jmfangio (log)

[marty mccabe]

Okay, you gotta take what I'm about to say with a slight grain of salt, as I have about 35 different rums right now.

That said, mkayahara is right from the perspective of, "what do you want to do with them?"

My initial thoughts:

light: one is fine and Flor de Cana is a very good one.

medium (or gold): here, you want something that's more than just caramel coloring. Something like Appleton VX, Cruzan Estate Diamond, or Cockspur Old Gold works great.

dark: now, dark is a funny thing. from a tiki perspective, Goslings doesn't qualify (at least, according to Jeff Berry), because it's got more of a spiced flavor. He prefers Myers; Coruba is also another dark Jamaican. That said, I use Goslings all the time, because I don't like Myers, so...

demerara: Lemon Hart (not 151) or El Dorado 5yr. Totally worth it, and called for in certain recipes. Also works great with ginger beer.

rhum agricole: buy one blanco, preferably La Favorite. Don't buy Clement. Learn to make Ti Punch.

Hope this helps.

[slkinsey]

demerara: Lemon Hart (not 151) or El Dorado 5yr.

Interesting about this one. I happened to run into a cache of LH 151 bottles the other day, and bought them all. My impression is that the only difference between Lemon Hart 40% and Lemon Hart 75.5% is that the lower proof stuff has a lot more water added. I've made cocktails using the overproof stuff as the base liquor, you just have to make sure that you get a lot more dilution. Ultimately, however, if you bought the 75.5% and watered it down to 40% yourself with spring water, you'd save quite a bit of money I imagine. Simply add 665 ml of spring water to each 750 ml of Lemon Hart 151, and you end up with 1415 ml of 40% Lemon Hart (that's almost two bottles of 40% for the price of one bottle of 754.5%!).

(Edited to fix percentages)

Edited February 6, 2009 by slkinsey (log)

[Dave the Cook]

I'm pretty sure the same thing was true of the late, lamented Inner Circle, which came in 80, 90, 115 and 151 proof. The 115 was my dark rum of choice for as long as it was available, but when it ran out, I bought whatever I could find. Finally, it occurred to me to do some arithmetic: 80 + 151 = 231. Divide that by two, and you're back to 115.

Mixing the two and comparing them to a remaining sample of 115 revealed little if any difference.

[slkinsey]

To clarify, I don't think that Inner Circle is so much lamented because it is demised, rather that it is lamented because it is no longer imported into the US. This is because, I am given to understand, the Inner Circle people were such pricks that the importers got tired of dealing with them.

Edited February 5, 2009 by slkinsey (log)

[Dave the Cook]

Right, at least in that it's not late. I don't know about the relationship between importers and the Inner Circle; I do know that when I asked about getting it, the consistent answer "can't" was preceded by a weary rolling of the eyes.

[Kent Wang]

That said, mkayahara is right from the perspective of, "what do you want to do with them?" 

My initial thoughts:

light: one is fine and Flor de Cana is a very good one. 

medium (or gold): here, you want something that's more than just caramel coloring.  Something like Appleton VX, Cruzan Estate Diamond, or Cockspur Old Gold works great.

dark: now, dark is a funny thing.  from a tiki perspective, Goslings doesn't qualify (at least, according to Jeff Berry), because it's got more of a spiced flavor.  He prefers Myers; Coruba is also another dark Jamaican.  That said, I use Goslings all the time, because I don't like Myers, so...

demerara: Lemon Hart (not 151) or El Dorado 5yr.  Totally worth it, and called for in certain recipes.  Also works great with ginger beer.

rhum agricole: buy one blanco, preferably La Favorite.  Don't buy Clement.  Learn to make Ti Punch.

Hope this helps.

←

This is a great start. I'd like to make some tiki drinks, and non-tiki as well but don't want to stock more than four dark rums.

Do you think Cruzan Blackstrap has a place? Does it deserve its own super-dark category?

Now that we've established these broad categories, where do all the countries fit into them?

[slkinsey]

"How many rums do I need?" is not really a question that can be answered. Or rather, the answer is: as many different ones as there different drinks and styles of drinks that you want to make, depending on how picky you are about specificity.

Here are a pair of posts I made in a similar thread a while back:

Gold rum to me says just that:  Rum that is right around the same color as a lager beer.  This will, then, be lighter in color and less intense in flavor/wood than an amber rum, which I see as being right around the same color as a good bitter ale. 

Ultimately, though, it's not clear that these are great distinctions to make.  All you're really doing is describing the color and approximate degree of wood aging.  You could describe Flor de Caña Extra Dry as a "white rum" but you could also describe La Favorite or, for that matter, Wray & Nephew Overproof as "white rums."  I think we will all agree that these three are radically different products.  Rather, Flor de Caña Extra Dry is a Cuban-style white rum and La Favorite is a white rhum agricole.

Going back to your earlier questions about Dave's description of a certain rum as "Barbados-style" -- that has to do with the fact that different areas have different traditions associated with rum distilling.  A Cuban amber rum by Havana Club or a Cuban-style amber rum by Flor de Caña is not going to be the same as a Guyanese amber rum by Lemon Hart or a Jamaican amber rum by Appleton.  If you're making a Queen's Park Swizzle, it's just not going to turn out right with the Cuban rum or the Jamaican rum.  This is why it's possible to make the full range of stylistically appropriate rye drinks with one or two different brands of rye, but in order to make the full range of rum drinks you need to have around a dozen bottlings of rum or be comfortable with a good bit of stylistic approximation.

I remember going to an rum event maybe 3-4 years ago and running into Dave there.  We just so happened to be standing together when we were called in to a side-room to offer some comments on rum for a video they were shooting (which for me involved keeping my mouth as shut as is constitutionally possible for me and looking at Dave).  Among the many interesting things he said for the tape was one that stuck with me:  He said that rum has by far the widest range of all other spirits.  You can go from rums that are so light and subtly flavored that they are practically vodka to rums that are so dark, thick and full flavored that they're practically still molasses -- and ever imaginable variation between those two extremes (this is all the more true when you consider that cachaça could be considered rum as well).  So it make a certain amount of sense that we'd need a lot more bottles of rum to cover the available ground than we'd need whiskey, gin or tequila.

←

The varieties of rum you can have are almost infinite.  It all depends on the level of specificity you want in your cocktails, and whether you make cocktails that call for certain kinds of rum.  No need to have a rhum agricole, for example, if you don't like to make rhum agricole drinks (e.g., Ti Punch).

As a very general statement -- and I'm no Ed Hamilton when it comes to rum expertise --  I'd say that at most any color/aging level there are two broad styles of rum: refined and funky.  So, for example, in the mid-amber range you have the funky Lemon Hart demerara rum from Guyana and the refined Appleton Estate Reserve rum from Jamaica.  If you were to have one funky and one refined rum at most every color level, you would be able to make appropriate versions of just about every rum drink.  Perhaps at the very lightest color you'd only need the refined (Cuban) style, unless you like rhum agricole.  And at the very darkest color you might be able to get by with only one example -- again, depending on what drinks you like to make.

←

So, it really depends on what you want to make. If you like tiki drinks, there are certain rums that you're probably going to want for that, and those won't be the same rums you want if you mostly like things like Daiquiris, and those won't be the same rums you want if you want mostly to make Swizzles, etc.

I would say that you can probably get by with a Cuban-style white; a cognac-style light amber rum (Appleton?); a darker, funkier rum like Lemon Hart (get the 75.5% one for greater flexibility); and a dark rum of moderate funkiness like Myers. This would allow you to at least approximate most styles of drinks using rum. Later on, if you find yourself increasing interest in a certain style, then you can increase your collection almost infinitely in that direction.

(Edited to fix typos)

Edited February 6, 2009 by slkinsey (log)

[marty mccabe]

Do you think Cruzan Blackstrap has a place? Does it deserve its own super-dark category?

Now that we've established these broad categories, where do all the countries fit into them?

←

In my opinion, Cruzan Blackstrap doesn't work as a "dark rum," in the conventional sense of things. I'm told it's more akin to the Navy rums of old.

As for where the countries fit in, that's an essay in itself, but I like what slkinsey has to say about it.

[tim]

Hi,

I assume that the color in Cruzan Blackstrap and Goslings Black Seal derive from caramelized molasses. Is it probable that more barrel aging would add color add character to these rums?

Tim

[Splificator]

In my opinion, Cruzan Blackstrap doesn't work as a "dark rum," in the conventional sense of things.  I'm told it's more akin to the Navy rums of old. 

Cruzan Blackstrap is in fact nothing like Navy rums, at least as they were understood by and served in the Royal Navy. Navy rums were a blend of pot-distilled Jamaican and Demerara rums, barrel-aged on the London docks (at least until the Luftwaffe blew those docks to bits in 1940). They were full-flavored, not to say funky, and very dry. I agree with haresfur about this one. A miss.

[marty mccabe]

In my opinion, Cruzan Blackstrap doesn't work as a "dark rum," in the conventional sense of things.  I'm told it's more akin to the Navy rums of old. 

Cruzan Blackstrap is in fact nothing like Navy rums, at least as they were understood by and served in the Royal Navy. Navy rums were a blend of pot-distilled Jamaican and Demerara rums, barrel-aged on the London docks (at least until the Luftwaffe blew those docks to bits in 1940). They were full-flavored, not to say funky, and very dry. I agree with haresfur about this one. A miss.

←

While I absolutely defer to you on this one (and probably should have thought about it for a sec before I typed that), someone migght enlighten Cruzan: "If you are already acquainted with Navy rum - here's the news: Cruzan Blackstrap Rum is a cleaner, less heavy Navy Rum..." That's off their website.

[Splificator]

someone migght enlighten Cruzan: "If you are already acquainted with Navy rum - here's the news: Cruzan Blackstrap Rum is a cleaner, less heavy Navy Rum..."  That's off their website. 

I don't think they really want enlightening here--do you?

[CincyCraig]

someone migght enlighten Cruzan: "If you are already acquainted with Navy rum - here's the news: Cruzan Blackstrap Rum is a cleaner, less heavy Navy Rum..."  That's off their website. 

I don't think they really want enlightening here--do you?

←

You know, I actually like the Cruzan Blackstrap, although I do not for a moment consider it to be a Navy Rum. I like to use it as a float on various Tiki cocktails, grogs and so on. In small doses it's quite nice.

Edited March 20, 2009 by CincyCraig (log)