“There isn’t any such factor as ‘blackstrap rum,’” says Richard Seale, grasp distiller of Foursquare Rum in Barbados.
And but, bartenders more and more are turning to it as a method so as to add sturdy taste to cocktails. Cruzan Black Strap Rum, specifically, has been popping up on cocktail menus, largely gaining consciousness after Giuseppe González known as it out in his revamp of the Jungle Chicken, swapping out Jamaican rum for inky Cruzan Black Strap. In Loss of life & Co.’s e book Cocktail Codex, the St. Croix rum even will get a poetic callout on the shortlist of really useful rums for Piña Coladas, amongst different drinks, describing it as “darkish as a moonless evening and with distinct flavors of molasses and maple syrup.”
True, there’s no official “blackstrap rum” class listed by the TTB or in rum bibles like Martin Cate’s Smuggler’s Cove. Ask round, and the definitions for “blackstrap rum” are pretty anecdotal: It’s comprised of blackstrap molasses, bartenders will typically say. However its defining traits are actually in its profile: Most will agree that it’s darkish and has a strong, typically vegetal taste. Past that, descriptors vary from licorice and toffee to fennel, celery or unsweetened chocolate.
Nonetheless, Seale maintains that “it’s nonsense to talk of ‘blackstrap rum.’” All throughout the Caribbean, rums are made with some portion of blackstrap molasses, or what he calls “ultimate molasses”—the final processing of sugar cane earlier than it turns into utterly unpalatable. “You would possibly as properly say ‘molasses rum.’”
Basically, Seale explains, sugar cane is crushed into juice, which is then evaporated into golden cane syrup. That syrup may be heated in a vacuum pan to type a dense mass of sugar crystals, suspended in thick, now very darkish, syrup. Handed to a centrifuge, the crystals are eliminated, leading to brown sugar; the remaining liquid is molasses, aka “fancy molasses.” It will probably then be returned to the vacuum pan to type extra crystals, that are centrifuged once more. This course of is carried out thrice, and the ultimate molasses is known as blackstrap molasses.
When you’ve ever tasted common molasses (what most of us merely name “molasses”) subsequent to blackstrap, you understand they’re not the identical factor. Molasses—usually offered to be used in confectionery fairly than rum—is thick, luscious and reasonably candy, with a sugar content material of about 70 p.c. By comparability, blackstrap molasses, which has a sugar content material of about 45 p.c, is darker and sludgy, and may be bitter and salty.
So if rums like Cruzan Black Strap, Bacardí Black and Kraken Black aren’t blackstrap, what are they?
Quick reply: They’re black rums. In different phrases, comparatively younger rums, which can or might not be distilled from blackstrap molasses, made darkish (or “black”) through caramel coloring added after distillation, to imitate the look of a long-aged rum. Often, flavoring or sweetener is added to recommend the flavour of molasses—typically even the salty-savory-earthy tones of blackstrap molasses. Black rum is “usually a lot darker in look than even 50 years in a barrel may obtain,” says Cate. He’s additionally fast to level out that there’s a distinction between “darkish rums”—normally which means barrel-aged rums—and black rums darkened by non-barrel means.
Black rum usually has been relegated to the underside shelf, thought of to be of poor high quality and difficult to drink. Most frequently, it’s used as a dramatic darkish float atop tiki drinks, or combined into classics just like the Corn ’n’ Oil or the Darkish ’n’ Stormy.
“It’s bitter espresso,” sums up Tyson Buhler, beverage director of Gin & Luck, who mixes Cruzan with different rums in his Wipeout cocktail so as to add subtly darkish, advanced tones. “It’s like espresso that’s been sitting too lengthy on the burner, like unhealthy bodega espresso.” But, it additionally provides a definite “pancake syrup” taste that’s in any other case laborious to search out and performs properly with a variety of different components.
Myers’s is probably the best-known of the black rum class—and it was one of many causes that Cruzan Black Strap was developed. “From a business standpoint, the rationale we’ve it’s to compete with a Myers’s,” says Gary Nelthropp, grasp distiller for Cruzan, who describes the model’s Black Strap as “a flavored rum.” Launched into the U.S. within the mid-Nineties, the rum was given a considerable sign increase when the producer added it to the “Distiller’s Assortment” in 2013—across the identical time that rum generally noticed a revival of shopper curiosity.
The bottom is a comparatively light-bodied two-year-old rum, Nelthropp explains—and sure, it’s distilled partly from blackstrap molasses, which “comprises vitamins that assist with fermentation.” The completed rum is later flavored to evoke the character of molasses, although he sees the general profile as nearer to luscious common molasses than bitter blackstrap. (No, there’s no blackstrap molasses within the flavoring part.)
So why title it after blackstrap molasses? “Advertising,” Nelthropp says with amusing. It conjures up photos of navy ships and molasses-filled barrels, he provides. (Along with Cruzan’s label language, Bacardí Black additionally touts its bottling as “developed to pay homage to blackstrap rum.”)
Considerably unpredictably, Cruzan’s success could have helped spawn the usage of precise blackstrap molasses amongst U.S. craft distillers. However the ensuing rums are white—and with no coloring added, they’re definitively outdoors the black rum class.
For instance, Rhode Island’s Thomas Tew Widows Stroll, an overproof white rum, and Oregon’s Warship Reserved Black Strap rum are each comprised of blackstrap molasses. So though Caribbean distillers could also be utilizing blackstrap molasses by default, says Brent Ryan, founding father of Newport Craft Brewing and Distilling, which makes Thomas Tew, U.S. craft distillers usually are not. Engaged on a smaller scale and fewer sure by long-standing provide chains, those that distill rum from nothing however blackstrap molasses have made a deliberate alternative to take action.
“As a distiller, you get much more taste utilizing it,” Ryan says; specifically, he favors the “vegetal” character blackstrap molasses offers. He additionally opted to make use of blackstrap to emulate home rum-making traditions 250 years in the past, “when there have been 22 distilleries working inside metropolis limits.”
Bartenders are embracing white blackstrap rum as properly. At The Eddy (now closed) in New York, head bartender Robert Rugg-Hinds used Widows Stroll for “spicy spine” within the American Tiki cocktail. “It’s a white rum with a unique seasoning background,” he explains.
At the same time as critics like Seale insist that blackstrap is a misnomer, these intentionally darkish, brooding bottles are unlikely to go away anytime quickly. However don’t count on this flavored rum to look as a star participant in, say, a Blackstrap Rum Previous-Normal. In smaller increments, nevertheless, bartenders are persevering with to achieve for it so as to add depth of taste to drinks.
“It’s not a rum that I significantly need to get pleasure from by itself,” sums up Buhler. “But it surely’s a taste that we are able to’t discover wherever else.”
