Rum Aging Science2
Introduction
Different climate conditions around the world affect these transformations in different ways. While the effects are universal, the results presented in this new series will be those from Rum Central’s Florence warehouse, located in Central Texas, USA.
Series Overview
The January 2020 issue of “Got Rum?” covers in detail the goals of this series, as well as, descriptions of the different equipment being used to collect and measure the data.
April’s Weather
The month of April was considerably warmer and less humid than that of march. The humidity inside the cellar hit a minimum of 30% and a maximum of 93%, with an average of 63% for the month.
Humidity for May
The temperature inside the cellar ranged from 52F to 88F, with an average of 73F for the month.
Temperature for May
The Rum
After 4 months, the transformation of the rum in the barrel is starting to be more impactful.
Alcohol Samples for May
Color: The color is definitely golden and shimmering. The spectrophotometer indicates it is darker than the sample from the previous month.
Aroma: The aroma has a better-defined “cask” personality, it is easy to see how similar it is to some “aged” commercial rums and if we chose to add spirits caramel we could match the taste and profile of many of them.
Flavor: For the first time since we started the aging study, the rum is showing early signs of oak-complexity and balance.
Ph: The rum that went into the barrel had a ph of 7.04. This number is now 5.23. Please refer to the march issue for an explanation of why ph values are not linear.
ABV: The ABV went down slightly from 63.42% to 63.40%.
