Hello everyone and welcome back to The Ombibulous, a show where we discuss a variety of topics about alcohol. From beer styles, the brewing process, distillation, in spirits and even liquor laws, there's a fascinating world to discover. On today's episode, we discover the history of rum. Joining me today is Michael Kashey of Thomas and Moriarty's here in downtown Mandan. I'm your host, Connor Brekke. Let's all raise a glass to The Ombibulous.

Connor Brekke 00:42

Welcome back to the show everybody. Today... the question is... where's the rum? Well, luckily, we have an answer for you. I'm joined again with Mr. Michael Kashey. And today's episode, we're going to go through a little bit of history about rum, and where you might be able to find some hint, there's a place in Mandan. Alright, so rum, what is rum in short?

Michael Kashey 01:06

So basically, rum is going to be a once again a distilled spirit that's going to be made from sugarcane or a byproduct of like sugarcane production. So either a sugarcane juice or molasses, which is going to be what's leftover when you boil sugarcane down.

Connor Brekke 01:25

And then the name rum is kind of uncertain, I suppose. There's a few, few ideas out there where it came from. One of them being, I believe the word rumbullion. The beverage of boiling sugarcane stocks.

Michael Kashey 01:40

Yeah, that, to me seems more like the... what would be most likely the actual origin of the word rum. But honestly, who knows?

Connor Brekke 01:52

It's a mystery.

Michael Kashey 01:52

It's been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, probably actually even longer than we even think.

Connor Brekke 01:58

Yeah, cuz anything alcohol, it's like, "oh, here's something let's ferment it." And "poof" there there you go.

Michael Kashey 02:03

Well, then distilling is possibly older than we thought, as well.

Connor Brekke 02:09

So rum is fermented from molasses sugar cane, and then are there... like how do you get it to that fermented stage? There's different types of yeasts?

Michael Kashey 02:21

Yeah, so you can either do... most distillers or a lot of distillers, I should say are going to use like a specific yeast strain. And then other distillers are going to actually basically do an open air fermentation where they allow all of those random, wild natural yeasts to get in there. And then those are usually get, you'll have like a little bit of a funk to those because usually though, but, actually once again, rum is insanely confusi

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