DIY Bay Rum AS

razorguy said:
Add more rum, instead! Isn't this supposed to be a Bay Rum? It's not Bay Vodka! ;)
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After yesterdays overwhelming vote to add more alcohol, I went to the cupboard today and added 50 ml more rum, then I read this this evening. (I'm too cheap to buy another bottle of grog anyway). Reckon it was the right choice. Due to the extra rum I also added:

10 x drops of West Indian bay leaf extract
1/2 x teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 x stick of cinnamon
1 x clove
10 x whole black peppers.

Shook it all up and put it back in the cupboard. Smelling better. Keep your up to speed over the coming month.
 
Dale.Whiley said:
Reckon it was the right choice.
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Very well done! You will not regret that. Alcohol is fundamental if you want to extract essential properties from your ingredients. It is negligible for essential oils (they simply need to mix up with the other liquids, although alcohol is useful on this regard, too) but it will be very useful for the best appreciation of all the other solid ingredients.

Dale.Whiley said:
Smelling better. Keep your up to speed over the coming month.
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On this regard, you really need to be patient. It will take one month or so in order for your Bay Rum to express all of its potential.
 
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razorguy said:
On this regard, you really need to be patient. It will take one month or so in order for your Bay Rum to express all of its potential.
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Seems about how long it takes for an aftershave to arrive from Europe... [emoji6]
 
@Dale.Whiley , what RG is saying is bang on - one of the most common methods of extracting essential oils from plants is by using alcohol - e.g they chop up the plants, steep, mix, mash them with the alcohol solution then put in a bit vat etc and essentially boil/distill the alcohol off, as it has a much lower volatility point than the natural EO's that are now dissolved in it.. They're left behind with the oils.

So without enough alcohol all the essential oils will be left in your spices and natural goodies.
 
"The mixture" didn't really have enough oomph to the scent. Half rum, half witch hazel smelled not rummy enough. Smells a bit better now but it needs time for the other scents to be extracted/be released from the raw plants. Hopefully in 4-6 weeks I'll be one dapper smellin' dude. Hopefully.
 
razorguy said:
It definitely looks hazy. I don't know whether I can post here links to other forums or sites, but few months ago I posted in other places pictures of the making of my last Bay Rum batch.
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I personally see no reason as to not, heck there's only recently been a thread started about a sale in another forum!
 
Nick the Knife said:
@Dale.Whiley , hows the concoction looking? Any pix?
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No pics. It is just dark liquid with floaty bits in a container. "Nothing to see here; move along".

razorguy said:
Rum smell basically depends on rum quality. In the final result you will mainly smell top notes of pimenta racemosa.
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The brand is not the highest quality. To me, rum is rum. When I did drink bleems ago I was a devout whiskey/bourbon drinker, not even able to stand the smell of rum. Funny how my favourite in aftershaves are Bay Rum fragrances. It is smelling better as it "matures" but I think it needs to be "sweeter" smelling. Maybe some more vanilla and a couple more cloves for a bit of "punch"? Still under 2 weeks fermenting since I made the "brew". Never having attempted this before I'll leave this for another week to see/smell what happens during the extraction/ageing process.
 
Dale.Whiley said:
It is smelling better as it "matures" but I think it needs to be "sweeter" smelling. Maybe some more vanilla and a couple more cloves for a bit of "punch"? Still under 2 weeks fermenting since I made the "brew". Never having attempted this before I'll leave this for another week to see/smell what happens during the extraction/ageing process.
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First of all, let me point out, in this case we are talking about maceration and not fermentation, as there are no sugar or yeast involved in the process. I hope you will not take offense by this, I simply wanted to clear things out.
As for smell, you should consider both clove and pimenta racemosa contain eugenol, therefore, if you add more cloves, you are simply enhancing the "bay" smell while attenuating all the rest.
You should also consider, smell will change slightly even after you decide to stop the maceration and filter the liquid. This essentially is because of stabilization and oxidation processes taking place as maturation goes on. Something similar also occurring in wine, although - because of high alcohol content - in spirits (and therefore in perfumes, including your Bay Rum) this process is much slower. You will however notice the smell will change a little in the course of the next months. It is just normal.
 
razorguy said:
First of all, let me point out, in this case we are talking about maceration and not fermentation, as there are no sugar or yeast involved in the process. I hope you will not take offense by this, I simply wanted to clear things out.
As for smell, you should consider both clove and pimenta racemosa contain eugenol, therefore, if you add more cloves, you are simply enhancing the "bay" smell while attenuating all the rest.
You should also consider, smell will change slightly even after you decide to stop the maceration and filter the liquid. This essentially is because of stabilization and oxidation processes taking place as maturation goes on. Something similar also occurring in wine, although - because of high alcohol content - in spirits (and therefore in perfumes, including your Bay Rum) this process is much slower. You will however notice the smell will change a little in the course of the next months. It is just normal.
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Offended? Hardly. My life is far to short to take offence at what people say, especially those who are trying to help me. And I probably wouldn't understand anyway!!!

I used fermenting as a term for brewing a concoction. I have learnt a new term in "maceration" though and what the process is actually called. I can throw my new found knowledge into a conversation somewhere and sound like I know something. Thanks @razorguy. I really do think all the witch hazel had a negating effect on the other scents. I might add some more bay leaf oil this weekend.
 
razorguy said:
As for smell, you should consider both clove and pimenta racemosa contain eugenol, therefore, if you add more cloves, you are simply enhancing the "bay" smell while attenuating all the rest.
You should also consider, smell will change slightly even after you decide to stop the maceration and filter the liquid. This essentially is because of stabilization and oxidation processes taking place as maturation goes on. Something similar also occurring in wine, although - because of high alcohol content - in spirits (and therefore in perfumes, including your Bay Rum) this process is much slower. You will however notice the smell will change a little in the course of the next months. It is just normal.
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Added 15 x drops of bay leaf oil, 1 x teaspoon of vanilla and 10 x black peppercorns. This is now at the 14 day mark. Still giving it a swirl daily to stir it up. No more additions now. 2 more weeks to go. I hope it is worth all the anticipation.
 
Dale.Whiley said:
Added 15 x drops of bay leaf oil, 1 x teaspoon of vanilla and 10 x black peppercorns. This is now at the 14 day mark. Still giving it a swirl daily to stir it up. No more additions now. 2 more weeks to go. I hope it is worth all the anticipation.
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I am curious to know how it will come out, although I would suggest you should not add ingredients "on the go" because you will not understand when "enough is enough". Aromas and fragrances are tricky sometimes and will "explode" all in a sudden during the maceration and stabilization process!
 
@razorguy, I tend to concur and thought the natural choice, would of been to do two or three lots, so there's an understanding of the differences and a quicker learning curve per batch :)
Each to their own though and I'm positive @Dale.Whiley will be happy with his first batch irrelevant if it's 92% or 97% of what's he's chasing :)
 
Here's an idea - I've had this DIY Bay Rum on the backburner, mainly so that I can secretly watch how @Dale.Whiley goes with his and also as my main side-project at present is doing a batch of cold process soap (just normal soap, not shaving!).

But one of the issues that came up is that to get the alcohol content high enough it can end up making the entire exercise a tad cost prohibitive - and what I specifically mean by that is for the amount of stuffing around it's not massively cheaper than commercial versions so the risk factor included (e.g a batch of cat's wizz!) makes it a bit of a second guesser.

As you've got to use rum - no getting around that - budget $30-35 for an entry level bottle. But then to get the alcohol content higher thats tricky......chemist bought rubbing alcohol is very expensive (which is ridiculous!) and the option most people end up at is using the cheapest available Vodka - again say $27-30 for 700ml.

Well here's what I believe is a good idea. Methylated Spirits. Now HEAR ME OUT.....I've confirmed through several other threads where people were wanting to use it for other medical uses that Digger's brand MS is 95% ethanol, 5% water, <0.1% denaturat (basically a non-toxic bittering agent to make it horrendous to drink). It contains nothing that should provide any issues with external use! Overseas they sometimes use methanol in theirs and this is where issues come up - but the Diggers Brand is (based on the info I've seen) totally clear of this.

MS does have a bit of a stigma around it but thats kind of unfair and largely linked to people's ignorance and linkage to folks drinking it. There's really no reason I can see why one couldn't use it as a completely acceptable substitute for alcohol in external topical application usage. Should allow people to significantly decrease the cost of such projects whilst keeping the alcohol content very high to extract maximum volatiles from the botanicals as per @razorguy 's recommendations.
 
Yep, Diggers Metho is a non-methanol based blend. Some sectors of the community have been known to drink it regardless - so the general law says to make it horrible but do not kill/maim them which the methanol would do (see some of the Bali poisonings in recent years). You will notice that most fragrance ingredients list 'Alcohol Denat' so it uses a denatured alcohol blend.

The other option is of course Spiritus (aka Polish pure Spirit) which is 80% Rectified Ethanol for human consumption. Yes, some drink it straight and others use it for cooking, flambé, or making their own fortified wines. You can get it at most bottle shops, but I would expect you probably couldn't in NT.
 
Spirytus seems to sell for ~$70 per 500ml bottle so whilst you could use it at that price you'd be paying ~45 times more for it than the unit price of the in theory identical performing, metho. So at that price you could buy OP Rum far more cheaply to add.

As alluded to, I think people just avoid metho due to the stigma and misunderstanding that it no longer contains methanol - otherwise rubbing alcohol that sells for a fortune in chemists would be out of business.
 
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