The Start of Rum in America begins with exploring the new world during the 1960s. When European explorers
started moving to the new world, they discovered many new things for selling. One of these new products was
sugarcane which gives us the all-important sugar that we use today, but another use is in the distillation of
rum. Known as kill devil or rumbullion, the first written mention of this drink was around the 1650s in
Barbados. Soon European settlers set up their first rum distillery on Staten Island, Boston, Massachusetts, and
quickly took off in America. Rum wasn't just used for trading but also as a trading item for slaves. Settlers
would trade rum for slaves to run plantations before going to the west indies for molasses turning the molasses
into rum to be sold to American people and used to trade for more slaves. This Cycle would only intensify as the
demand increased, causing a feedback loop for the people running the distilleries. British would try to stop
this loop by introducing two acts on the colonies. The Molasses Act of 1733 and the Sugar Act of 1764 could be
accredited to growing tensions and the start of the revolutionary war. After the war, however, rum's popularity
began to decline for many reasons. With much more new land people started moving west away from the ports.
Another big reason was the Irish and Scottish immigrants bringing the secrets of whiskey distillation. Rum
didn't completely die out though as it still had a home on sailing ships in many navies. The most famous of
these was grog a watered-down rum served to sailors in the British navy but this practice died out as time went
on now becoming a treat for special occasions. Today rum is used mainly in cocktails and doesn't have the
popularity that it once did.
The process of making rum starts with taking your harvested sugarcane and extracting the water and sugar juice.
This is done by a process called milling. Once these ingredients are extracted they boil to get sugar crystals
that can be used for selling but the byproduct of the process is molasses. Molasses is the product used in the
fermentation process, by adding yeast and water to the molasses the sugar is turned into alcohol to be used in
the distillation. Depending on the brand either a pot still or a collum still we are used to distilling the
alcohol into the finished product of rum where it is put into a wooden cask for aging.