Post #779346 by Hurricane Hayward on Wed, Aug 30, 2017 12:48 AM

On 2017-08-19 10:21, mikehooker wrote:

On 2017-08-18 14:25, MadDogMike wrote:

I notice the July batch is darker than the August batch, is that from the barrel aging?

Looks like that end of the bar is just illuminated more. The rums might be the same color. Still, I'm interested to know what goes in to them and what your new Navy Grog recipe is. Care to enlighten Sir Hayward?

You are correct Sir Hooker ... the color was pretty much the same from the first batch to the second. Taste was exactly the same. But the char in these small barrels does have a limited lifespan, so I'm being careful not to push it too much further. Here are the details on the Navy rum:

It's a blend of six rums from four islands in the traditional Navy style. They included 80-proof, 126-proof and 151-proof rums. All were non-aged or lightly aged with little or no added sugar and color. I aged each island's rum separately for around two weeks in the 1-liter charred American oak barrel (Red Head Oak Aging Barrels), then blended them together and aged them for several more weeks in the same barrel.

So it took about 10 weeks total, but the final rum spent about 4 weeks in the barrel. The small size of the barrel accelerates aging. And our Florida weather closely mimics the Caribbean, so the barrel did most of the work quite nicely out on my second-floor balcony. The result is a 105-proof rum that may not be as good as Hamilton Navy but is not bad for my first effort.

It also makes for a mighty fine Navy Grog ...