DIY Spiced Rum - Update and new batches

10 days ago I decided to embark on an experiment in rum, trying to spice my own rum, after some maturing it's time to have a look at how things have gone.

Batch one

This consisted of passion fruit, lime zest, cinnamon, vanilla and lemon grass.  I'd hoped that the sweetness of the passion fruit and vanilla would balance the sharpness of the limes and the woody spiciness of the cinnamon.

So far the lime has come through strong but started to fade out slowly, I still can't taste the vanilla or passion fruit but I'm prepared to be patient with this one, I still think there's potential here.

Batch two

Now because I had rum left I decided to try another few batches, if batch one was going to be sweet I'd go for something more sharp with batch two.  

Hunting about the internet I came across this recipe and used:

• 200ml Bacardi
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Zest of 1 lime
• Zest of 1 blood orange
• Flesh of 1 blood orange (no pith)
• a peeled and diced thumb of ginger

So far this has a nice bite to it from the citrus if a little harsh, I've added more ginger as that really wasn''t coming through particularly.  I think there's an interesting cocktail to be made with the end product of this.

Batch three

With some rum left over I decided to go with the flavours that I liked outside of rum and see what happened, so, for batch three it's

• 300ml Bacardi
• 12 mint leaves
• 1 vanilla pod and seeds
• 1/2 a trimmed pineapple, caramelised the outside of the fruit on a griddle pan to get that slightly burnt flavour

Well, this is the big winner so far, the vanilla is subtle and along with the pineapple it's rounding out the edges of the rum with the mint adding a lovely freshness to it all.  This could actually be drunk neat quite easily.

The question is how long I leave the spices/fruits to macerate, it looks like it'll have to be a thorough tasting schedule.  The things I do for science...