Last Night's Tipple

Last night, I returned to Pusser's Rum. You will recall that it is distilled in wooden pot stills in Guyana that at one time produced the rum that was given to sailors in the Royal Navy. Yes, that's what I wrote: wooden pot stills. I guess that it shouldn't surprise me that the ingenuity of man would arrive at a pot still made from wood. It certainly is cheaper than copper and is probably easier to fashion into a pot-still-looking thing. And it's not just rum where wooden stills were used: some of the small-scale Bourbon distillers in the early days of Kentucky would distill by "running the log," which was a pot-still-like contraption made by hollowing out a log, filling the cavity with distiller's beer, and heating that beer by running steam though copper pipe in the cavity.

One of the great arguments in whisky production is about the value of using wooden fermentation tanks (as opposed to stainless steel). Proponents of wood say that the wood imparts more flavor to the distiller's beer, which in turn imparts more flavor to the new-make whiskey. Proponents of stainless steel say that that is hogwash and that stainless steel is better because it's a heck of a lot easier to clean and maintain than wood. I don't know who's right. I do know that any influence of wood in the fermentation tank has to pale in comparison to the influence of wood in the still. Remember that the more copper contact alcohol vapor has in the still, the lighter and purer the resultant new-make spirit will be. This is because copper will react with impurities and congeners in the vapor, which has the effect of filtering out impurities. Well, wooden pot stills will have very little copper in them. That means that spirit coming out of them is likely to be heavy, full-bodied, and congener-rich, to say nothing of whatever flavor the wood directly imparts.

As logic would suggest, Pusser's Rum is heavy, full-bodied, and congener-rich. As I mentioned when I first wrote about it, it has an overwhelming musty aroma that doesn't blow off with time in the glass. I would never guess that this was rum from nosing it. Tasting it makes it more obvious what it is: it's very sweet, with some of the flavor overtones that I associate with rum. But there is no vanilla that I can detect, despite the oak aging. I still can't decide whether I like this stuff. Maybe it will grow on me.

Last Night's Tipple

Sailors have a reputation for drinking a lot. Nowadays, this is done ashore. Before 1970 in the Royal Navy (1862 in the US Navy) a lot of it was done on the ship. Royal Navy regulations entitled every sailor to a gallon of beer or wine per day. That's a lot of beer, and it took up a great deal of room aboard the ship. Not only that, but it would spoil or otherwise become unpalatable on long voyages. Captains began to substitute brandy, which had the dual virtues of taking up less space and of being immune to spoilage. After the English captured Jamaica in 1655, they had easy access to another spirit, rum, and rum gradually replaced brandy as the spirit of choice aboard Royal Navy ships. Because it was stronger than beer or wine, Royal Navy officials figured that a pint of rum was roughly equivalent of the required gallon of beer. Half a pint was issued in the morning, and half a pint in the evening; and the sailors were required to drink it all at once. Not surprisingly, this caused a non-trivial amount of drunkenness aboard the ship (can you imagine climbing up into the rigging in your bare feet on a rolling ship in heavy seas after having consumed a half pint of spirits?), and Admiral Vernon introduced grog in 1740. This was a mixture of rum, water, and lime juice. The quantity of rum issued did not decrease, but Admiral Vernon believed that watered rum was less intoxicating than full-strength rum. This mixture had the added benefit of introducing Vitamin C into the diets of Royal Navy sailors, which made them less susceptible to such common sea-going diseases as scurvy. By 1970, the rum ration was down to only an eighth of a pint per day. Parliament, believing the practice archaic, abolished it entirely in that year.

Pusser's Rum claims to be authentic Royal Navy rum. It has no added color or flavorings, a rarity in the world of modern rum; but what makes it truly unique is the way that it's distilled. Pusser's uses pot stills, but they're not like the copper pot stills of Scotland or Cognac. They're wooden. That's right: while the necks are copper, the body of the pots is wood. And it's not new wood, either. Some of it is up to 200 years old. Pusser's claims that using seasoned wood like this gives the rum a unique, full-bodied aroma and flavor. They're right about that. It's unlike any rum that I've ever had. Pusser's also claims to be the single-malt of the rum world. That's an accurate description, although perhaps for reasons other than what Pusser's intended: it smells and tastes more like a malt Scotch than it does a rum. It's perfectly dry, without the vanilla and molasses flavors that aged rums usually have. The nose is austere and musty. The flavor is, if anything, grainly and malt-like. I can't decide whether I like it or not, but it certainly is unique.