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podcast transcript
Rum is not just a spirit used in cocktails. It is unique among beverages in how it has shaped world history.
Rum led to the establishment of sugar plantations, played an important role in the British Navy, and was responsible for the eradication of slavery and the growth of global trade.
Today it may have lost its global significance, but it has become an ingredient in cocktails and an important part of the Caribbean economy.
Learn more about Rum’s journey from empire-building byproduct to homemade delicacy in this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Rum is not just an alcoholic beverage. It played a unique role in the economy and history of early America that no other spirit can claim. Rum’s history and its influence on history is what sets it apart from other spirits such as vodka, tequila, or whiskey.
Before learning about the history of rum, you must first understand its basic ingredient, sugar.
Sugar moved slowly from Southeast Asia to Europe via the Silk Road and Indian Ocean trade. Columbus brought sugarcane prunings and seedlings with him on his second voyage to the Americas.
Sugarcane requires intensive cultivation. Heavy rain and tropical temperatures are required. The Caribbean and West Indies were perfect for sugar production. Europeans settled on islands like Barbados precisely to establish large sugar plantations.
Before Europeans arrived in America, sugar was a rare luxury. In just 150 years, it has become a necessity. By 1700, European colonies were producing 50,000 tons of sugar per year. One hundred years later, that amount reached 400,000 metric tons.
The basic ingredient of rum comes from a by-product of the sugar refining process. To extract sugar, mechanical mills crushed tall grass-like canes between large rollers to squeeze out all the sap. Growers call this sap. BesoA frothy liquid that is boiled to crystallize sugar.
It took about 50 pounds of beso in the pot to make one 5-pound bag of sugar. Only 10% of the liquid actually turns into sugar, so the rest evaporates as water vapor or remains as a heavy, amorphous syrup.
As the water evaporates and the syrup thickens, it becomes molasses, which was originally a waste product from the sugar production process. In the example of 50 pounds of sugar cane sap, the refining process produces approximately 6 pounds of molasses.
As sugar production increased, producers faced a massive logistical nightmare of what to do with mountains of molasses, a material they initially considered waste.
Sugar production facilities throughout the Caribbean had to process nearly 50 million gallons of molasses each year. Plantation owners fed it to livestock, forced it on slave workers, and desperately attempted to cook it. Attempts to brew beer with it also failed.
Due to the local climate, the beer was often of poor quality. The fermentation temperature was about 20 degrees too high, so it tasted sour and vinegar-like. Despite our best efforts, there was too much going on.
The solution to what to do with excess molasses came from an unexpected source. In other words, they were slaves transported from Africa to work in the sugar cane fields.
Sugar cultivation required enormous labor, and enslaved Africans became an integral part of both sugar cultivation and rum distillation.
For those who were forced to work in the fields, there was a solution: to utilize molasses. Anthropologist Marley Brown described the contribution of slaves to the production of rum from molasses: These enslaved Africans brought with them the millennia-old knowledge of fermenting grains and palm sap to produce alcohol. It was indispensable in developing the process of fermenting sugar cane juice or molasses, a by-product of the sugar refining process, into alcohol, and distilling it to make rum.
Fermentation occurs when yeast is introduced to sugar. Yeast consumes sugar to produce ethanol and carbon dioxide. Molasses is easy to ferment because it contains about 65% sugar after boiling. Yeasts are small molds that live on sweet fruits and plants, such as sugarcane.
Raw molasses is actually too dense. Spirits must be diluted with water to achieve fermentation. They also added two main ingredients to produce alcohol.
First, they added skimming, a heavy, nutrient-rich foam skimmed from the top of boiling sugar cane juice that is used to nourish and activate wild yeast growth. They also added dunder, the acidic liquid left over from previous distillations. Dunder lowered the pH and protected the rum wort.
The mixture is then left open in wooden barrels for up to two weeks where airborne yeast ferments it into a wine-like liquid. To turn this sugary wine into a high-octane spirit, distillers boiled the low-alcohol liquid in copper pots.
Because ethanol has a lower boiling point than water, the alcohol vaporizes first, rises up the neck of the still, travels through pipes cooled with cold water, and then condenses, creating a high-quality spirit.
After condensation, the distiller ages the raw rum in oak barrels where the rum gets its flavor from wood tannins.
In his book The history of the world in six glassesTom Standage described an early mixture known as kill-devil. Kill Devil was infinitely strong, but it didn’t taste very good. People drank a lot of it, actually too much. Because it often makes them sleep on the ground… (It’s) a hot, hellish, terrible drink.
Early rums were powerful but of poor quality. Given these explanations, it’s hard to imagine rum becoming a global sensation. To improve the taste of rum, producers experimented with mixing it with other rums to change its flavor profile. To remove unpleasant aromas, rum often had to be toned down by diluting it with distilled water.
I once drank rum straight from a distillery in Haiti and it was truly one of the worst things I’ve ever put in my mouth. There is a good reason why we need to filter and process it before it is ready for consumption.
Despite its shortcomings, rum has gained enormous popularity throughout the Caribbean. In the 18th century, rum consumption reached 13 gallons per person per year.
One of the most sinister uses of rum was its use to appease slaves. Plantation owners deliberately rationed rum to newly arrived captive workers to blunt the psychological trauma caused by sugar slavery and intentionally kept them slightly intoxicated. The Planters believed that this constant state of drunkenness broke their spirits and discouraged their uprising.
Plantation owners also distributed rum as a reward to slaves for a job well done.
Rum consumption has become a phenomenon worthy of integration into global trade networks. Rum became one of humanity’s first global products.
Rum became a key cog in the trade network linking Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
The Trade Triangle brought valuable raw materials into Europe.
Europeans developed a strong taste for tobacco and preferred cotton clothing to scratchy wool and flax linen. Sugar became a necessity in Europe, evolving from a rare commodity to a common commodity.
The second leg of the network was the slave trade, where slave ships transported human cargo from Africa. Slaves were transported from Africa to the Western Hemisphere primarily to work in sugar-producing areas.
The final stage of the trade sent manufactured and finished products to Africa.
Rum was an important part of all parts of the Trade Triangle. Anthropologist Frederick Smith explained the appeal of rum along trade networks. Rum was an important ingredient in the punch served at elite gatherings in Europe and its colonies, and an important trade commodity in Africa. Rum became a versatile substance that promoted a connection to the spiritual world and promoted group identity within slave communities.
In fact, as demand for rum grew, it gradually became a form of currency across the network. Rum eventually became the most common currency for acquiring African slaves.
Rum was central to the entire triangular trade. Merchants used rum to buy captive laborers, forcing planters to grow sugar, which produced molasses to distill more rum.
At the height of the Atlantic trade, rum production shifted from the Caribbean to the New England colonies, especially before the American Revolution.
It had little to do with profitability. Huge amounts of wood are consumed in the manufacture of rum. Because the Caribbean lacked North American hardwoods old enough to power copper stills, New England began importing molasses and took control of rum production.
The sugar plantations of the Caribbean have shed no tears over the loss of sugar production. They took up huge amounts of land that could be used to grow more sugar, which was much more profitable than producing rum.
It was on the ship that rum began to change. By the late 17th century, rum had replaced water as the preferred drink on ships. Water, a captain’s preferred choice for obvious reasons, gets dirty on long voyages. Beer was not an option on the ship because it was sour. The high cost made wine impossible for mass consumption.
Rum was cheap, readily available, and, more importantly, loved by sailors.
To maintain strict discipline and keep sailors sane, naval captains began pouring water on rum to ensure order on board their ships.
The captain also developed another powerful use for rum: medicinal cocktails. In the 18th century, British Admiral Edward Vernon was concerned about scurvy on board HMS Burford. Vernon realized that lime juice could be mixed with rum and water to prevent scurvy in the crew.
In the Caribbean, limes were plentiful and cheap, but eating them was somewhat unpleasant. Adding sugar to rum is a completely different matter. Vernon’s cocktail, called “Old Grog,” was perhaps the world’s first cocktail and one that served an important purpose.
Fortunately for the British, Old Grog spread throughout the Royal Navy and became a staple, solving an old sailor killer and ensuring Britain’s continued supremacy over the waves.
Rum’s influence gradually diminished over time. During the American Revolution, disruptions in supply chains and a drive to produce indigenous spirits prompted the shift to whiskey in North America.
The French and Indian War marked the end of a trading system that had long benefited colonial merchants, and localized grain-based whiskey production gained another advantage as British trade controls became more stringent.
Finally, the abolition of slavery in the 19th century signaled the end of the industry, permanently disrupting traditional sugar and molasses supply chains.
Rum began to make a comeback in the 20th century, especially after the repeal of Prohibition, when pent-up frustration led to more widespread cocktail production.
Equally important to rum lovers, Cuba established very friendly relations with American business interests, increasing the supply and quality of rum. Cuba Libre was created after the Spanish-American War by mixing American Coca-Cola and Cuban rum.
The Royal Navy issued daily rum until the 1970s. The last rum allocation took place on July 31, 1970. This day is known as Black Tot Day, which I covered in a previous episode.
America’s sudden obsession with vodka briefly derailed rum’s rise, but interest surged again in the 1980s, fueled by industrial rum production led by brands such as Captain Morgan, Bacardi and Malibu.
Today, rum occupies a new niche. Craft rum is a handcrafted rum that distillers brew with single-farm sugars and age in specific barrels to create a unique flavor. Distillers, like whiskey manufacturers, can manipulate rum production by adding unique flavors and esters.
Rum began as a by-product of sugar, but became a much larger product. One of the world’s first truly global products, rum has had a profound impact on world history.
Rum contributed to the explosion of sugar production, facilitated the expansion of slavery, and expanded trade routes around the Atlantic.
…not bad for what most people associate with fruit cocktails.
