molasses , a byproduct of sugar refining, is a mineral-rich, pungent, and viscous brown syrup with a high sucrose content; its name is derived from the Latin mellaceus, “honeyed,” via the Portuguese melaço. Its sugar content makes it ideal for fermentation and distillation, which is why, along with another byproduct, “skimmings” or “scum,” it became one of the bases for rum making on sugar plantations in the Caribbean in the seventeenth century. In the early colonial era, sugar cane juice was boiled in a series of increasingly smaller copper cauldrons as the impurity-rich foam was skimmed off. The sticky juice from the final cauldron was poured into conical clay sugar molds with a small hole on the bottom to allow the molasses to drain into clay jars known as “drips.” See sugar cane. In some places, such as Barbados, planters would cap the sugar molds with wet pads of white clay. This practice, known as “claying,” removed more molasses and left a lighter and more refined sugarloaf. The molasses could be sent to the fermentation vats in the distillery or boiled again to extract what little sugar remained. (Blackstrap molasses, for instance, is a dark, rich, bitter, and thick substance that has gone through several boilings and thus has a low sugar content that renders it less than ideal for rum making.)
The use of molasses and skimmings (collectively known as “sweets”) for rum making highlights the efficiency of early Caribbean sugar planters. Rather than simply dispose of these things—effectively, their industrial waste—they fermented them and distilled them into rum, which was typically thought to contribute 10–20 percent of plantation revenues.
In 1848, the Jamaican distiller Leonard Wray gave the composition of the wash he made his rum from as 10 percent molasses, 20 percent skimmings, 20 percent water, and 50 percent dunder (the spent wash from a previous distillation). See dunder. While he used more dunder than most, the general composition of his wash was roughly representative of common Caribbean practice from the seventeenth century into the early twentieth.
In the twentieth century, the consolidation and technical evolution of the sugar industry meant that skimmings were no longer available to the vast majority of distilleries, and the sweets used for most rums moved to purely molasses.
Molasses was also widely used in colonial North America to sweeten certain mixed drinks. See Black Strap and flip. Today, it sometimes appears in drinks, although most often in the form of so-called black rum or blackstrap rum, a light-bodied, column-distilled rum flavored and colored with molasses after distillation.
See also Caribbean; rum; and skimmings.
Byrn, M. La Fayette. The Complete Practical Distiller. Philadelphia: Henry Cary Baird, 1868.
Smith, Frederick H. Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.
Wray, Leonard. The Practical Sugar Planter. London: Smith, Elder, 1848.
By: Frederick H. Smith