The Story of Rum

Podcast Transcript

Rum isn’t just a spirit that is used in cocktails. It is unique amongst beverages in how it has shaped world history.

Rum has driven the creation of sugar plantations, played an important role in the Royal Navy, and was responsible for the growth of slavery and global trade.

Today, it may have lost its global importance, but it has become an ingredient in cocktails and an important part of Caribbean economies.

Learn more about Rum’s journey from an empire-building by-product to a craft-made delicacy on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Rum isn’t just another alcoholic beverage. It played a unique role in the economy and history of the early Americas that no other spirit can claim. Its history and its impact on history are what set rum apart from other spirits such as vodka, tequila, or whiskey.

Before we get into the history of rum, we first have to understand the fundamental ingredient of rum, sugar.

Sugar slowly migrated from Southeast Asia to Europe via the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean trade. Columbus brought sugar cane trimmings or saplings with him on his second voyage to the Americas.

Sugarcane requires intensive cultivation; it demands heavy rainfall and tropical temperatures. The Caribbean and West Indies were perfect for sugar production. Europeans settled on islands such as Barbados precisely to establish massive sugar plantations.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans in America, sugar was a rare luxury. It became a necessity in just 150 years. In 1700, European colonies produced 50,000 metric tons of sugar yearly. 100 years later, it had reached 400,000 metric tons.

The basic ingredient of rum comes from a by-product of sugar refining. To extract sugar, mechanical mills crushed the tall grass-like cane between large rollers, squeezing out all the sap. Planters call this sap vesou, a bubbly liquid that is boiled down to crystallize sugar.

To make just one five-pound bag of sugar, planters needed approximately fifty pounds of vesou. As only 10% of the liquid actually turns into sugar, the rest either boils away as water vapor or remains as a heavy, non-crystallizable syrup.

As the water evaporates and the syrup thickens, it becomes molasses, which was originally just a waste product from sugar production. In our 50-lb example of sugarcane sap, the refining process yields about 6 lbs of molasses.

As sugar production grew, producers faced a massive logistical nightmare: what to do with mountains of molasses, a substance they had initially considered a waste product.

Across the Caribbean, sugar production facilities had to dispose of nearly 50 million gallons of molasses each year. Planters fed it to livestock, forced it onto enslaved laborers, and desperately tried to cook with it. Attempts to brew beer with it also failed.

Due to the region’s climate, beer was often of poor quality; fermentation temperatures were about 20 degrees too high, leading to a sour, vinegary taste. Despite their best efforts, there was simply too much of it.

The solution to what to do with the excess molasses came from an unlikely source: the slaves who had been transported from Africa to work in the sugar cane fields.

Sugar cultivation required a massive workforce, and enslaved Africans became the indispensable core of both sugar cultivation and rum distillation.

The people who were forced to work in the fields had a solution for how to use molasses. Anthropologist Marley Brown described the contribution of slaves to the production of rum from molasses, noting: These enslaved Africans brought with them millennia-old knowledge of fermenting grains and palm sap to produce alcohol. They were indispensable in developing the process by which sugarcane juice or molasses, a byproduct of sugar refining, was fermented into alcohol and distilled, producing rum.

Fermentation occurs when yeast is introduced to sugar. The yeast consumes the sugar, producing ethanol and carbon dioxide. Molasses is about 65% sugar after boiling, making it easy to ferment. Yeast is a tiny fungus that lives on sugary fruits and plants, such as sugarcane.

Raw molasses is actually too dense. Distillers have to dilute it with water to achieve fermentation. They also added two key ingredients to produce alcohol.

First, they added the scummings, the heavy, nutrient-rich foam skimmed from the top of the boiling sugarcane juice, which was used to nourish and activate wild yeast growth. They also added dunder, an acidic liquid left from the previous distillation. Dunder lowered the pH and protected the rum wort.

The mixture would then stay open in wooden vats for up to two weeks where airborne yeasts fermented it into a wine-like liquid. To convert this sugar wine into a high-octane spirit, distillers boiled the low-alcohol liquid in a copper pot still.

Because ethanol has a lower boiling point than water, the alcohol vaporizes first, rising into the neck of the still and traveling through a pipe cooled with cold water, where it condenses into a high-proof spirit.

After condensation, distillers aged the raw rum in oak barrels where the rum gains flavors from wood tannins.

In his book A History of the World in 6 Glasses, Tom Standage described an early concoction known as kill-devil: Kill-devil was infinitely strong, but not very pleasant in taste…the people drink much of it, indeed, too much; for it often lulls them asleep on the ground…[it is] a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor.

Early rum was potent but of poor quality. Given this description, it is hard to imagine rum becoming a global sensation. To improve rum’s taste, producers experimented by blending it with other rums, thereby altering the flavor profile. Removing the unpleasant notes often required diluting the rum with distilled water to try to tone it down.

I once had rum straight from a still in Haiti and it was truly one of the worst things I have ever put into my mouth. There is a good reason why it has to be filtered and processed before it is ready for consumption.

Despite its shortcomings, rum gained immense popularity across the Caribbean. By the 18th century, rum consumption reached as much as 13 gallons per person each year.

One of the most sinister applications for rum was its use in mollifying slaves. Plantation owners intentionally rationed rum to newly arrived captive laborers to blunt the psychological trauma of sugar slavery, deliberately keeping them mildly intoxicated. Planters believed this constant state of inebriation broke their spirits and discouraged uprisings.

Planters also handed out rum as a reward to slaves who had completed tasks well.

The consumption of rum became 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 Triangle of Trade funneled valuable raw materials to Europe.

Europeans had developed a strong taste for tobacco and preferred cotton clothing to the scratchy wool and flax linen. Sugar became a necessity in Europe, evolving from an elite rarity to a common commodity.

The second leg of the network featured 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 regions.

The final leg of the trade sent manufactured and finished products to Africa.

Rum was an important part of every section of the Triangle of Trade. Anthropologist Frederick Smith described the lure of rum along the trade network. Rum was both a prized ingredient in punch served at elite gatherings in Europe and the colonies and an important trade commodity in Africa. Rum became a versatile substance that facilitated connection with the spiritual world and promoted group identity within enslaved communities.

In fact, as demand for rum increased, it gradually became a form of currency across the network. Rum eventually became the most common currency for acquiring African slaves.

Rum was the key to the entire Triangle Trade. Traders used rum to buy captive laborers, whom planters forced to cultivate sugar, which yielded molasses for distilling more rum.

During the height of the Atlantic trade, rum production transitioned from the Caribbean to the New England colonies, especially before the American Revolution.

It had little to do with profitability. Manufacturing rum consumes an immense number of trees. The Caribbean lacked the aging hardwoods of North America to fire up the copper stills, so New England began importing molasses and assumed control over rum production.

The sugar plantations of the Caribbean did not shed a tear over losing this production; they took up massive amounts of land that could have been used to cultivate more sugar, which was even more lucrative than rum production.

It was on ships that rum began to change. By the late 17th century, rum had replaced water as the preferred drink on ships. Water, the captains’ preferred choice for obvious reasons, grew foul on long voyages. Beer was not an option on ships, as it soured. High costs kept wine out of reach for mass consumption.

Rum was cheap, readily available, and, more importantly, beloved by sailors.

To maintain strict discipline and keep their crews sober, naval captains began watering down the rum to ensure order on ships.

Captains also developed another powerful use for rum: medicinal cocktails. 18th-century British Admiral Edward Vernon was concerned about scurvy on board the HMS Burford. Vernon realized he could mix lime juice with rum and water to prevent scurvy in his crew.

Limes were plentiful and cheap in the Caribbean, but eating a lime is rather unpleasant. Adding it to rum with sugar is a different matter altogether. Vernon’s concoction which was called “Old Grog” is perhaps the world’s first cocktail, and one with an important purpose.

Fortunately for the British, Old Grog spread and became a staple across the Royal Navy, solving an age-old killer of sailors and ensuring continued British supremacy on the waves.

Rum’s influence gradually diminished over time. Disruption in supply chains during the American Revolution and the movement to produce indigenous spirits facilitated the transition in North America to Whiskey.

The French and Indian War period also saw the end of a trade system that had long benefited colonial merchants, leading to more stringent British trade controls and thereby giving localized grain-based whiskey production another advantage.

Finally, the abolition of slavery in the 19th century sounded the death knell for the industry, permanently disrupting traditional sugar and molasses supply chains.

Rum began to make a comeback in the 20th century, particularly after the repeal of Prohibition, when pent-up frustration led to more widespread cocktail production.

Equally important for rum enthusiasts, Cuba established a very friendly relationship with American business interests, thereby increasing rum supply and quality. The Cuba Libre was created after the Spanish-American War, when American Coca-Cola was mixed with Cuban rum.

The Royal Navy kept issuing rum daily until the 1970s. The last rum allotment took place on July 31, 1970, a day known as Black Tot Day, which I covered in a previous episode.

America’s sudden obsession with vodka briefly derailed rum’s upward climb, but interest came roaring back in the 1980s, driven by industrial rum production led by brands such as Captain Morgan, Bacardi, and Malibu.

Today, rum occupies a new niche: craft rums, which distillers brew from single-plantation sugar and age in specific barrels to impart unique flavors. Distillers can manipulate rum production by adding unique flavors and esters, just as whiskey manufacturers do.

Rum began as a byproduct of sugar, but it became something much larger: As one of the world’s first truly global products, rum has left a deep impact on world history.

Rum contributed to the explosion of sugar production, facilitated the expansion of slavery, and expanded trade routes around the Atlantic Ocean.

…which is not bad for something that most people associate with fruity cocktails.