Any truly heavy rums besides Prichard's?

[mbanu]

The whole Puerto-Rican light vs. Jamaican heavy rum thing is a bit misleading.

From what I've come to understand, Jamaican-style rum is made in a very similar fashion to blended Scotch, with lower distillation proof "heavy rum" being blended with higher distillation proof "spirit rum" and then aged together in barrels (and then blended again with other rums aged in a similar fashion to achieve the end result), while Puerto Rican-style rum is simply pure high distillation proof "spirit rum" aged or aged and filtered, depending.

However what I'm looking for is "straight" heavy rum styles, like Prichards, with no "spirit rum" added. (On an unrelated note, I'm itching to get my hands on some of the Prichards white rum, really curious how the base spirit tastes before the barrel flavors come into play)

Do they make stuff like this anymore? Did they ever?? Any advice?

[Ed Hamilton]

There are a lot of things to consider here. First, Pritchard's white rum isn't the same rum before it's aged as their dark aged rum. Phil's White Rum is distilled 5 times in a pot still, with the result being a very clean, unaged white rum. Though this is done in a pot still, it is a very high distillation quality. Distilling 5 times allows Phil to eliminate the heads and tails very effectively. On the other hand, Phil's rum that is distilled to be aged starts out as a heavier spirit.

Jamaica isn't the only place where light and heavy rums are blended after aging. Most of the older rums of Barbados are blends of heavier pot still rum and lighter rums. On most of the rum producing islands, distilleries don't just age their white rum , but blend other rums to give the older rums more flavor.

When distilling rum from molasses that will be bottled as white rum, distillers want to distill to a high proof to eliminate the heads and as much of the fusel oils as possible. On the other hand, for rum that will be bottled as aged rum, distillers want to capture more flavor. The highly-distilled neutral spirits that are bottled as white rum, don't make the best aged rums, they are just too light and taste more like wood than rum.

In order to give the aged rums more character, distillers blend heavier and light rums for a balanced flavor. As inviting as it may sound, you probably wouldn't enjoy drinking the heavy component of these rums unaged.

But, on the French islands, there is only one product stream captured from the still. Unaged, this rhum agricole is bottled as white rhum. After aging it is bottled as rhum vieux or some other designation denoting an aged spirit. But like everywhere else there are exceptions. Most of the French distiller's rhums are a progression of rhums bottled at different ages. But, there has to be an exception. St James and Neisson take some of their white rhum and store it in large vats, as opposed to the small barrels used for aging, and then bottle the one to two year old rhum as Rhum Ambre or Rhum Eleve Sous Bois respectively.