Fake Rum Unmasked

Spend a while researching rum and you’ll find out there’s an open secret among rum professionals: many popular rums on the market contain non-rum additives. The most famous additive is of course sugar, and folks armed with hydrometers and alcohol meters have created a fairly large database of rums proven to contain added sugar.

Look a little deeper, however, and you’ll learn many rum producers are also adding ingredients that are more difficult to detect. Give an adulterated rum to a rum expert, and most will immediately recognize the presence of exogenous ingredients, but how do we flatten the learning curve for those still learning about the shadowy side of rum blending?

It’s difficult to prove the presence of additives without extensive lab analyses, so rather than spending thousands on lab fees to definitively out a bunch of suspect rums, I decided to approach the issue in reverse: I would make my own fake rum to show how it’s done.

Read the article here to learn about my blender’s toolkit and see how my fake rums actually tasted. And for the real gluttons for punishment among you, stick around as I attempt to unpack the U.S. government’s regulations on rum additives.

Cheers,
Josh