Oh, I hope everything is okay ,I see you're located in Los Angeles, California. Prayer for you.

You remind me so much of one of my aunts back in North Carolina. Thanks to my grandpa and uncles, that lady could make a run of some of the best liquor in those mountains, always very sought after! Thank you for carrying on the art! Great job!!

Just got me a bottle. Thanks for the review

I wish mine came with slides. Great microscope though, my mom got me one for Christmas too!

Hi there! how do you tight the main knob since mine is loose?

I'm in the UK abd molasses is really expensive snd not available in bulk really. I can get feed molasses quite cheap. Lots of people say its fine, some say its nowhere near as good. Classic internet:) Ill try it as i dont have an option really. Its also my first go at all this so have nothing to compare it to anyway!

👍🏿

I had a chance to buy this today! I have never gotten anything from Hampden so I was super tempted to buy it. Unfortunately everything that I was seeing on the Internet was saying that the 2024 is one of the worst ones of the great houses, so I didn't pull the trigger. I wish I saw this video first though before I left the store!

Try and run the still slow and low to get 3-10 drips a second. When making a Pineapple Rum the first cut will be all pineapple and the next will be all molasses and then the next will be pineapple again and back and forth getting lighter till tails. Makes blending flavors more fun. I run a 10gal pot still and thumper and do a cut every time it goes up 1 degree F in temp. This does not work if it drips more then 15 a second or is a stream. This technique takes time but is well worth it. Especially when trying to isolate certain flavors.

I just discovered you. Great job is a under statement. I love how you break down the how and why. I got something to muck up your dunder pit. I know you are all about rum, but I make a dunder sour mash barrel. I discovered the yeast off of the Prickly Pear Fruit ferments at and below a Ph of 3. Could you explain how this happens. It ferments fast but only gets about 3-4% ABV. I added Yellow Yeast (only ferments Grains, hot or cold) the whiskey (Malted Rye, Bloody Butcher corn and Oat) comes out Awesome. After you explained esters 2 years ago I better understand whats going on. I don't get how it keeps fermenting with so low Ph. I cool it to about 60F and 55F and can get it to go for a week and a half and it just gets way more fruity. I make a yeast bomb (starter yeast) from the malted grains to start. In my dunder barrel the muck consists of yeast from Malted (Rye, Wheat, Oat, Corn) and Wild yeast of Prickly Pear, Banana, small Persimmons and store bought Yellow label Yeast (grains) to get all the grain and bump up ABV. I shoot for 11% but got 19% sometimes. Just trying to give you a all info i can. I plan to make a new barrel and add Pineapple yeast to the muck and make Rum. But I made a Prickly Pear Mezcal with Blue Agave syrup and it taste like the Prickly Pear fruit, and if i try and rase the Ph up to about 5% it stops and stalls. Any Info about that would be great, Please, No one explains it like you do, keep it up.

Where did you get that adorable mic?

Love the new mic stand. Tiny mic propped inside binder clip, nice touch😉

Michael's has a dried flower/potpourri/herbal odor mixed with woodsy stuff-so yea, I get what you mean. 2024 is totally awesome and far better than last years release, which was kinda lackluster. cheers!

It's no going to rival 12 year old Glenfiddich any time soon.

Holiday Michael's is a killer tasting note. 🎄 In terms of absolute quality, I personally think the Great Houses are all very very close (except '23, which wasn't quite there). But the one I find myself reaching for is the '22...

Debbie Downer here, I just called the liq store here in my area of Florida. He told me it’s going to be in stock soon but the price is expected to be around $130.00. Bummer for me. 😂

My ranking of the Hampden Great House range: 2020, 2019, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021. I'm fortunate to visit with the Hussey family at the Great House every year; there is no place that capture the true spirit of traditional Jamaican Rum like the Hampden Estate in Wakefield.

For curiosity, how long did you leave your dunder (after baseline distillation) before you added it to your fermenter for dunderclap? i'm assuming that at some point it gets prohibitively difficult to curate enough dunder to make a lot of dundered-fermentation so is there a sweet spot for this?

New water distiller here😂. Anyways, recently picked this thing up with the temperature control. Seems to be working great for a newbie like me. You will need to boost the temperature every few minutes while doing cuts. You can kind of hear when it goes off. You will also not have to run it as hot when making cuts. So you only need to bump it 1 degree every 3 minutes or so. Starting at say 190 with running low wines.

I just discovered your channel! I also do rum reviews on KZbin. Blind rum taste tests! So much fun!

Nice to see a review of one of the cheaper options versus the one that costs about 6x as much that you see everywhere. Love the size and convenience but the capacity seems to be the biggest downside of an air still - I noticed there was one brand that has a 900W 6L for sale on amazon that just has the on/off but no reviews on how it works with distilling "water." Seems like every little bit of capacity would help when trying to do cuts.

Late to the party but ditto as per other comments, excellent video with a ton of great and accurate info. Best I've found as i was researching a bit about Armagnac. Typing this while having a dram of the same bottle but from the 1979 vintage. 45 years old and tastes beautifully fresh and full of complex flavors. It's got it all and the price was an absolute steal as well! Thanks again, cheers

No worry! You have pronounced correctly and in-depth knowledge on Chinese distilled wine 白酒 There many type of yeasts strain used and also fungi to breakdown the carbohydrate to glucose. Combination give the wine flavour

Always great to see another Baijiu review on the web. Very well done, and very good spoken Mandarin for a beginner! The two major extant styles of sauce aroma baijiu are the Mao style (represented by Moutai) and the Lang style (represented by Langjiu). My very superficial take on the style difference is that the Mao style has got a more acidic backbone (through the finish), whereas the Lang style is more earthy. As Scott mentioned, Luzhou Laojiao is the real deal. Their flagship brand, Guojiao 1573, bottles probably the best strong aroma baijiu (as thus the best baijiu =p) under $500. Yes, the international bottling of Guojiao is a tier above even the flying fairy Moutai at less than half the latter's price, IMO.

I am a giant fan of copper pot stills like you have. It is an excellent size for experimentation. The real "trick" to using a still like that is to distill slowly with as little heat as possible.

I drank a bunch of that during my 2 trips to China. Nasty stuff.

You must have got the good stuff. No cloves, no car tyre burnout taste. Try making some at home using Angel yellow label yeast with steamed rice and wheat. If that is too funky add some boiled raisins near the end of fermentation. Good luck ;)

Funny timing as I'm just starting to explore tasting & creating traditional Asian wines & spirits. Looking forward to more "different spirits" =]

Thanks for sharing the interesting baijiu tasting experienced. I visited and was hosted at a baijiu producer in the city of Jinan . Your description of the process made sense and is close to what I experienced. Yes the solid fermentstions are very unusual and fascinating. Clouds of steam at distillation time too. As for the product I have not been game to retry it since my visit, we had a formal banquet at the distillery, and as local etiquette demanded rather over did the 70%(v/v) baijiu provided as we went through the numerous toasts. Will never forget the experience.

I’m a simple them. I see Robyn talking about Baijiu and speaking duolingo mandarin, I click and I stay until the end.

Yessss! I'm delighted, I kind of knew you'd dig this. 😂 And I'm super-impressed by the research and the Chinese!! For a next move in baijiu, I think heading west to Sichuan and strong aroma style is a good move. It's a very different style, but equally fun. Luzhou Laojiao is a personal favorite - Ming River, Derek Sandhaus' brand, is pretty widely available and very solid, but I kinda like the distillery's own bottlings a bit more.

Great video. The only one that I have so far is rumfire and I still don't enjoy it straight. But 10 ml in a cocktail adds tons of flavor and I can't imagine not having it in my bar.

Thank you very much for a very well explained answer to my desire to know the difference between these two types of whiskey. I think I will try the Tennessee variety first. Thanks again from England. XXX ❤

Hi Robyn, I think you should do an update to this video in regards to what happened in Laos a few days ago... I'm still trying to work out why it happened. I was there many moons ago backpacking in hostels and too drank their moonshine...was a rice whiskey which turned out quite nice.... How could this happen in the first place ....??

to save myself the work of trying to pour molasses into a tiny hole I just cut the top off IBC's, it also helps with cooling the fermentations

Hell yeah!

It's amazing how much work goes into our hobbies

Ask him about that time I nailed the Montanya Valentia! 😄

Blind tastings can be really tough. We sometimes blind taste in black Glencairn glasses which makes it even more difficult. Amazing how much color can influence your thinking. I remember a room full of us Rum Geeks at SF Rum Fest, out of 8 rums only a few people got two rums right. And that is one of the many reasons why rum is so much fun.

First time using Dunder. I was wondering if I would be further ahead to add the Dunder a little later in the fermentation using 40% Dunder. What are your thoughts?

I made a guess only to #1. Based on your hesitation between cane juice or molasses, and pot or column still, I guessed a higher ester Reunion stuff.

I was guessing Guadeloupe for number 1.

Ohhh my pic for one was Ecuador. I was thinking El Amparo

Let’s go! I was so hyped after hearing the little spoiler on the stream. Also I bought some samples of the new SBS Worthy Park cane juice rum and the TECA, plus the Port Mourant white rum so it’s gonna be a pretty funky week!

Oh no! I missed this one! I'll try to catch up later today... EDIT: appreciate the rocks ↔️ flowers shout-out 😂

C<>H means Continental Hampden

I'm Late! Just got here (middle of the night). Had something simmering in the kitchen. Can't wait to watch. Pouring a little taste of Variable to sip while watching. On with the show...

How long did it take you to begin discerning all these compounds, both for their scent and for their flavor? How does one get past the ethanol burn, especially at those higher %ABV's? I'm very low brow so to speak wrt rum (inexperienced, to say the least). I like craft beers, micro beers (except for IPA's), etc. I can't really distinguish specific flavors, per se, either I like it or I don't. I started investigating rum, its history, its production, and all its various complexities because I started extracting my own vanilla. I began that rabbit hole because I had always considered vanilla as the no flavor flavoring but thought perhaps if I make my own I would come to appreciate real pure vanilla (PVE). Extracting vanilla can be as complex as rum production even though the USFDA has a small set of rules concerning the commercial sale of PVE. As a home hobby, the rules are boiled down to best practices, just a guideline really ;-) But it is strongly suggested to use 1 ounce of vanilla beans, either grade A or grade B to each cup of alcohol in the range of 35% ABV to 50% ABV. Too low of an %ABV and one risks fermentation and too high reportedly dehydrates the bean pod preventing effective extraction. Since vanilla bean pods reportedly have over 300 flavor compounds and some are more water soluble and others more soluble in alcohol, the end results can allegedly vary dramatically with just a change in %ABV. Back to rum - many hobbyist choose some variety of rums because of the potential sweetness that can be gained over a neutral vodka or being lost in an overpowering whiskey. So the process can take (commonly) between 6 months and two - three years. So the raw vanilla beans can come from all over the world and each has their own flavor and scent profiles. There are charts depicting the four general categories of flavors; light & sweet, buttery & creamy, bold & fruity, dark & earthy. I have bought many different varietals from Madagascar, Comoros, Sri Lanka, India, DRC, etc. I can smell a difference and I can taste a difference but I can't really describe the differences like you do with your neat rums. BTW most seem to be far too expensive to use for extracting even the most gourmet of vanilla beans. But what you do is enviable for discerning the qualities of both products - hence one of the main reasons I keep watching your videos. I want to understand what s going on and why. I think the most expensive or high brow rum that I have used and enjoy neat as well is Siesta Key Toasted Coconut Rum (I know, laughable, right?). This isn't in your preferred categories, as I understand you perspective, being a flavored rum. But it does make an excellent vanilla extract. My apologies for the somewhat long non-sequitur monologue.

wow i had no idea there actually was a tiny bit of methanol in spirits. also the wisdom behind "hair of the dog" may have some actual basis in fact because of historical methanol contamination. wild

I have a similar microscope that's done pretty well, but the LED light is starting to dim. I'm not sure how to replace it. Have you had to replace your scope's LED light? Any tips? Thanks!