hOW WE MAKE OUR RUMS

Ninefold Distillery makes Scottish rum from scratch in southwest Scotland. Our entire process is carried out on site; we don’t import and rebadge rums, so what you buy from us is authentically Scottish. However, we do need to import our raw materials: cane molasses and yeast, but we’re very clear about this. Transparency is one of our missions!

FERMENTATION

All of our rums start with fermenting a mix of water and sugar cane molasses. Our molasses comes from a variety of sources, but the bulk is Algerian. In our 1500 litre fermentation tank, once molasses and warm water are combined, we add two rum yeasts and a yeast nutrient. The nutrient turbo charges the fermentation to give us a relatively quick fermentation period of 3-4 days. At the end of this time, all the sugars that the yeast can access have been converted to alcohol and a variety of by-products. We now have a fermented ‘wash’ (or beer, if you like) that’s around 9-10% ABV.

We start with sugar cane molasses, the crucial ingredient to making rum

Active fermentation in our fermentation vessel

distillation

We double pot distil the fermented wash using our Scottish-built 500 litre copper hybrid pot still. The first distillation, called the ‘stripping run’, simply boils out all of the alcohol from the wash to create a higher ABV product called ‘low wines’. Because we can’t get all 1500 litres of wash in our still, we have to do 500 litre batches at a time, usually taking two days of distilling.

The low wines collected from the 2-3 stripping runs are then returned to the still to be distilled into rum. On this ‘spirit run’ we use the hybrid element of the still: the rectifying column. This creates a very clean and high ABV rum, which comes off the still at around 90% ABV. We collect the best portion of this, the ‘hearts’ to become our rum. After distilling, we add water to the 90% spirit to reduce down to whatever proof we wish for our products!

The 500 litre hybrid copper pot still at Ninefold

flavouring, bottling, labelling

We have three core products: unaged, spiced and aged rums. For our unaged rum, we reduce the ABV of our distilled spirit to 46% and allow to rest for some time to mellow out, before bottling and labelling here on site. It usually takes two weeks from the start of the fermentation, to bottling. Each batch we make is around 250-300 bottles, making us truly small batch.

For our Dormont Spiced rum, we go down to about 40% ABV, before resting and then adding our flavours, sugar and caramel. Once this is mixed and left overnight, we can bottle and label up.

Adding sugar and caramel to our spiced rum

cask ageing

A small amount of our production goes into casks for ageing. Our rum is reduced down to between 60% and 64% ABV before casking. We have a variety of casks here in our bond: virgin American oak, ex-bourbon, ex-Scotch whisky, ex-Oloroso/Speyside and some very special barrels made for us using oak and beech from our estate!

Most of our casks are standard barrel (200 litres) or larger, intended for ageing for around 2 years to 10+ years. We have finished two single cask rums in ex-Oloroso ex-Scotch whisky quarter casks, which worked an absolute treat!

Our ageing programme is very much an experimental work in progress. Keep an eye on the website and our social media channels for continued updates. Already bought a bottle of our Cask Aged Pure Single Rum? Find out what went into your batch by checking out the Casks page (continually updated)