Making liquor illegally at home isn't easy. Making rum at
home in the old Jamaican style of pot stills, fermenting pits and malodorous
but essential dunder is even more challenging. Dissatisfaction with commercial products. A
curiosity for chemistry. Desire for creative license. These might sound like
reasonable explanations for an aspiring pizzaiolo to plunk down for a
wood-fired oven in the backyard. But what about a spirits still? After all,
moonshining has been outlawed or severely restricted by practically every
country on the planet, except by those level-headed Kiwis. Yet, the threat of a
felony conviction and fine, or worse, a jail stint hasn’t deterred a defiant
global underground community of pseudonyms from sharing recipes and advice on
recreating their favorite spirits. That includes an especially hardcore subset
chasing Jamaica’s traditional aromatic pot-still rums, a style that employs a
stinky, yeast and bacteria-laden liquid called dunder for achieving its
trademark tropical perfumes.
Analogous to backset in bourbon
production, dunder is the non-alcoholic by-product of a sugar-alcohol
distillation left at the bottom of the still. Adding dunder to the next
fermentation boosts the formation of aromatic compounds called esters; the
higher the ester count, the more pungent the fruity pineapple and banana, even
nail polish flavors in the rum. While the definition sounds innocuous enough,
in practice, the liquid must be stored between distillations, and that’s when
things get funky for the home enthusiast.
In Jamaica’s headier heydays, when nearly
150 sugar cane estates sported mills and stills (and slavery), 19th-century rum
makers dug holes to house the residue. Lore has it goat heads and dead bats,
along with rotting fruit, were tossed into the malodorous stew to propagate
bacteria that would later alchemize into a boozy elixir. Contemporary
commercial producers claim to eschew the “dunder pit” tradition in favor of
tanks. Either way, illicit home distillers bent on making a punchy,
full-flavored spirit, can’t exactly excavate and openly tend a cesspool along
their neighbor’s fence.
Moonshiner turned commercial still
manufacturer, Amsterdam-based Edwin van Eijk said that, given that dunder is an
essential building block for Jamaican-style flavor, the benefits of working
with it outweigh the drawbacks. Van
Eijk first started experimenting with liquor recipes at his holiday house in
Hungary, a country in which government tolerates such recreations and
practically every family passes down, házipálinka, homemade brandy
recipe to the next generation. Finding most marketplace rums too light, van
Eijk searched for ways to create his own. “What my dunder adds to the taste is
depth, complexity and intensity,” he said.
Fortunately, my job at Hemingway Rum
Company, allows me to do some experimenting with dunder and other things
necessary to make a good medium bodied rum.
We are a very young operation, but it is a chance to learn about some of
these time-honored rum making techniques.
I hope with time, and a stronger demand for the bold Jamaican style rums
will once again be available at our local liquor stores.
