the castle

Rum Raid for The Castle is a rum tasting being held this coming Wed, Oct 11th at The Steam Plant as a fundraiser for  The Castle,  a vital part of the mental health delivery system in Montgomery County. They provide a place for peer support, a place to have fun while learning responsibility, accountability and gaining some empowerment over the leisure time.

Ticket holders will have the choice to taste the rum straight up or mixed in a cocktail.Rum Raid for The Castle is a rum tasting being held this coming Wed, Oct 11th at The Steam Plant!

Some rums are made for mixing into cocktails, others are good enough to sip straight. This event will help you learn the nuances of  types of rum on the market. Age, distillation method, and even place of origin all work in tandem to create different varieties of the spirit, each with a distinct use, profile, and history.

Here’s an idea of what you’ll be able to taste at the event:

Spiced Rum– Broadly speaking, this popular variation is defined as any rum that’s infused with myriad herbs and spices. According to the Rum Lab, spiced rum came about as a way to make rum more palatable, since “fresh” rum packed a good amount of potency back in the day.

Gold Rum – Vanilla, coconut, citrus, and caramel are some of the tasting notes that you might find in a gold or amber rum, which hit the sweet spot between light and dark rums in terms of both aging time and taste. These medium-bodied rums get their color from added caramel or being aged in pale oak barrels and lean a touch sweeter to taste, with a subtle buttery richness that makes for a pleasant on-the-rocks sipping experience.

White Rum – If you like piña coladas, you probably like light rum (and maybe, getting caught in the rain). The most common type of rum, white rum is light in body, sweet in flavor, and has a pleasantly mild character. While it’s still made from sugarcane juice or molasses white rum is typically only aged for about a year.

Dark Rum – A well-aged dark rum boasts hints of brown sugar, toffee, and sometimes vanilla and honey, which lend well to enjoying the spirit straight to let each layer of flavor shine. You’ll find them in stalwarts like a Dark ‘N’ Stormy, Hurricane, or Painkiller.

Black Rum – First popularized in the post-Prohibition era as a cocktail mixer (the idea was to make it the base of a punch), black rum was meant to mimic the look of a deeply aged rum at a lower price point, according to Martin Cate, author of “Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum and the Cult of Tiki.” The spirit is aged for three years in white oak and crafted with fermented molasses, so it offers much more body and interest.

Aged Rum – Aged rums get their warm, toasty hue from sitting in barrels for extended periods of time. Despite the labor in making this style of rum, it’s grown quite popular in recent years, taking its cues from the careful, regionally tied distillation methods of Scotch and whiskey, resulting in a nuanced, quaffable spirit. Of course, these rums are relatively rare by nature since they take so long to come to fruition.

Flavored Rum – Quite simply, any rum with flavoring agents added that aren’t natural spices or the infusions you might find in spiced rums. These rums begin with a neutral, sweet base of rum before the flavorings and colorings are added. This is a pretty broad category with options ranging from simple tropical infusions (think pineapple and coconut) to more involved flavor profiles like coffee, chocolate, and cherry vanilla

English Style Rum – Modern-day British rums are characterized by the distilling method (now made using a mix of pot and column distilling) as well as a wild yeast-fermented molasses base rather than cane juice. These sweet, rich expressions are great on the rocks

French Style Rum (Rhum) –  Rhums, which hail from the French Caribbean, are all produced in column stills using sugar cane juice fermented for up to five days. The resulting flavor is softly sweet, with fresh grassy undertones and elegant hints of floral notes.