White Wizard - Aged One Year

This was the first rum I ever made. It was made because I am not a whiskey or beer drinker and wanted to sit down with my wife and enjoy a drink. She prefers wine and at the time we had an abundance of fruits from our hobby farm in Texas. I was making an annual Mulberry wine that everyone raved about and we could never get enough berries to make enough of it. One day the wife stumbled upon a YouTube video on how to make Blackberry Brandy. A few batches of not so good brandy and I started to explore rum. I greatly enjoy a well-known coconut rum or an award winning spiced black rum. I figured I was doing pretty good with the wine, why not try my hand at rum. I had all the tools, or could make the ones I didn’t already have. I converted an old pressure cooker into a still and started my first attempt. I think the first attempt was mostly brown sugar, white table sugar and way too much water. It was several batches later that I started actually buying the molasses instead of using brown sugar, and many more before I figured out my favorite type of molasses.

This one was pretty easy to name, I greatly enjoy playing D&D and we had a fairly regular group at the time. It's not uncommon to hear people talking about distilling use words like "White Lightning" or "White Dog" or "White Rum". I joined the two together and came up with White Wizard, very shortly after starting to talk about the new name the image of Gnorm as a white wizard and three different ages all popped into my head and it was a done deal.

With the unaged Rum fresh off the still, Gnorm is a young wizard, a few small twigs still on his staff, bright and shiny clean robes, and fresh face. He has barely started his adventuring and his beard shows it.

The second variety of the White Wizard is a one year old rum. Here Gnorm is a mid-life adventurer, he's been around the block a few times and knows what he's doing. A little bold, a little cocky, and all ready to go. A staff in good shape, worn but serviceable roves, and a few lines of wisdom on his face and a fully fleshed out beard to be proud of.

Finally we get to the third version of our White Wizard, this one aged for around 5 years. This Gnorm is downright old, His staff is now bowed and gnarly, He's now wearing some tattered robes with a patch here or there. His face has seen way too many sunny days and he's got the wrinkles to show experience. His beard, though white, still commands the respect of a well-rounded adventurer.

Rum is actually easy to make but impossible to master. You can make rum from several sugar cane products, the quality and level of refinement will determine your finished product. After several hundred attempts and more than a few major recipe changes, I have settled on a Supreme Baking Molasses, water, and yeast. The simplicity is more complicated than it seems. There were countless batches just trying to find the proper proportions, adding a little of this or a little of that or a small adjustment here or throwing this away. I do tend to use some fermentation aids as the molasses is not ideal for healthy yeast but aside from a little yeast nutrient and/or a little yeast energizer that’s all there is to this secret recipe. I won't admit to the amounts of each in my recipe but I feel like I have hit the nail on the head for an easy drinking, slightly sweet finished product. This Rum is twice distilled, made in micro-distillery sized 10bbl fermenters, and aged in 15 or 30 gallon new oak, medium toasted barrels.