The Story of Rum

Rum isn't just a spirit that's used in cocktails. It's 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 byproduct to a craft-made delicacy on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Have you ever wondered what it's like to be buried in an avalanche? how it feels to crash a skydive. I remember feeling my body hit the ground. These are the stories you'll hear on the podcast called What Was That Like? True stories told by the actual person who went through it. And you'll hear actual 911 calls. There's a man at my back door trying to get in.

for what was that like on any podcast app or at what was that like dot com. Trouble falling asleep, yearning for a new sleep ritual? It's time to unlock the magic of Nightfalls. Step into a world where bedtime stories take on a whole new meaning. Night Falls is one of the world's leading bedtime story podcasts, transporting you to a mystical clearing nestled among ancient pines.

Hosted by the captivating Scottish voice of Jeffrey Newland, Nightfalls offers original bedtime stories for adults, delivered in friendly, soft tones. As each episode progresses, the pace slows down, gently guiding you into a deep slumber. Listeners say it always works and makes him sleep like a baby. So why wait? It's time to experience the tranquility of Nightfalls for yourself. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts and embark on a journey to the Mystical Falls.

Just search Night Falls on your favorite podcast app and let Jeffrey's soothing voice guide you to a restful night's sleep.

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 impact on history are what set rum apart from other spirits such as vodka, tequila, or whiskey. But before we get into the history of rum, we first have to understand the fundamental ingredient of rum, sugar.

Sugars slowly migrated from Southeast Asia to Europe via the Silk Road and Indian Ocean trade. Columbus brought sugarcane 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 the Americas, sugar was a rare luxury. It then became a necessity in a span of just 150 years. In the year 1700, European colonies produced about 50,000 metric tons of sugar annually. Just a hundred years later, it had reached 400,000 metric tons. The basic ingredient of rum comes from a byproduct of sugar refining. To extract sugar, mechanized mills crush the tall grass like cane between large rollers, squeezing out all the sap.

Planters called the sap visou, a bubbly liquid that's boiled down to crystallize sugar. To make just one five pound bag of sugar, planters needed approximately fifty pounds of visou. 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-pound example of sugarcane sap, the refining process yields about six pounds 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 fifty million gallons of molasses every 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 twenty degrees too high, leading to a sour, vinegary taste. And despite their best efforts, there was just too much of it.

The solution of what to do with the excess molasses came from an unlikely source. The very slaves who had been transported from Africa to work in the sugarcane field. 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 describes the contribution of slaves to the production of rum from molasses, noting quote 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. End quote. 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. And 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. And they also add two key ingredients to produce alcohol. First, they added the scummings, the heavier, nutrient-rich foam skimmed off the top of boiling sugarcane juice, which was used to nourish and activate wild yeast growth. And they also added Dunder, an acidic liquid left from the previous distillation. Dunder lowered the pH and protected the rum wart.

The mixture would then stay in open wooden vats for up to two weeks where airborne yeast fermented it into a wine-like liquid. To convert this sugary wine into a highctane spirit, distillers then 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 then condenses into a high proof spirit.

After condensation, distillers would age the raw rum in oak barrels where the rum would gain flavor from wood tannins. In his book, A History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage described an early concoction known as Kill Devil. He notes quote, Kildevil was infinitely strong but not very pleasant in taste. The people drank much of it, indeed too much, for it often lulls them to sleep on the ground. It's a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor. End quote.

Early rum was potent but of poor quality. Given this description, it's 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 when I was in Haiti, and it was truly one of the worst things I've ever put in my mouth. There is a good reason why it has to be filtered and processed before it's ready for consumption.

Despite its shortcomings, rum gained immense popularity across the Caribbean. By the eighteenth century, rum consumption there reached as much as thirteen gallons per person per 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 drama of sugar slavery, deliberately keeping them mildly intoxicated.

Planters believe this constant state of inebriation broke their spirits and discouraged uprisings. Planters also handed up 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. Rome became a key component in the trade network linking Africa, Europe, and the Americas. What became known as the Triangle Trade funneled valuable raw materials to Europe.

Europeans had developed a strong taste for tobacco and preferred cotton clothing to 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 Americas primarily to work in sugar producing regions.

And the final leg of the trade sent manufactured and finished products to Africa. And rum was an important part in every section of the triangle trade. Anthropologist Frederick Smith described the lure of rum along the trade network by noting quote 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. End quote. 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 basically the key to the entire triangle trade. Traders used rum to buy captive laborers, who then were 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 for sailors. Water, the captain's preferred choice for obvious reasons, grew foul on long voyages. Beer was not an option on ships as it soured, and high costs kept wine out of reach for mass consumption. Rum, however, was cheap, readily available, and more importantly, beloved by sailors.

To maintain strict discipline and to 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. eighteenth century British Admiral Edward Vernon was concerned about scurvy aboard his ship 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 raw 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 that had 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 wave.

Rome'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 yet another advantage.

Finally, the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century sounded the death knell for the industry, permanently disrupting traditional sugar and molasses supply chains. Rum began to make a comeback in the twentieth 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 Cubalibre was created after the Spanish American War when American Coca-Cola was mixed with Cuban rum. The Royal Navy kept issuing rum every day until the nineteen seventies. The last rum allotment took place on july thirty first, nineteen seventy, 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 nineteen eighties, 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.

The story of rum began as just 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 too bad for something that most people today simply associate with fruity cocktails.

Mm-hmm. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research and writing for this episode was provided by Joel Hermanson. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord, as this is where everything happens outside of the podcast.

As always, if you leave a review on any of the major podcast apps, you too can have it running the show.