Molasses is what is left when the sugar is taken out, and nobody knew what to do with it
Cottons in Camden holds a 4.5 from sixteen hundred and five people, charges thirty to forty pounds, and it has one of the more serious rum lists in London.
And rum exists because nobody knew what to do with the rubbish.
Molasses
When you boil sugar cane juice and crystallise the sugar out of it, you are left with a thick, dark, bitter syrup.
That is molasses. It is what remains when the valuable part has been removed.
And on the sugar plantations of the seventeenth-century Caribbean it was a problem – produced in enormous quantities, not worth shipping, and it had to go somewhere.
And it ferments
Which somebody noticed.
Molasses is full of residual sugar, and residual sugar plus wild yeast plus a hot climate produces alcohol very quickly and without anybody doing anything at all.
And then somebody distilled it.
The result was harsh and strong, and the early accounts of it are not flattering – one seventeenth-century description calls it a hot, hellish and terrible liquor.
It was given to the enslaved people who produced it, and to sailors, and to anybody who could not afford anything else.
What it was built on
And we are not going to write around this.
The sugar industry of the Caribbean was operated by enslaved people, in conditions that killed them at a rate which required continuous replacement, and rum was a by-product of that system.
It was also a currency of it. Rum was traded for enslaved people on the African coast – and the triangular trade is not a controversial reading, it is the documented structure of the business.
The Prat wrote this at the Sugar Loaf in the City and at Cottons in Shoreditch, and we will write it here.
This is not a footnote to the drink. It is where the drink comes from.
Grog
Which the navy invented and which is named after a coat.
The rum ration was issued daily to Royal Navy sailors from 1655 – and in 1740 Admiral Edward Vernon ordered that it be diluted with water, because the men were incapable.
He habitually wore a coat made of grogram cloth. He was nicknamed Old Grog.
And the diluted rum was named after him.
The ration was finally abolished in 1970. The last day is still called Black Tot Day, and there were men who wore black armbands.
Verdict
Excellent bar, serious list, good number.
Go, drink something aged, and know what it was made from.
Why the barrel matters
Which is worth knowing before you order.
Rum is aged in oak, and a very large proportion of it is aged in second-hand bourbon barrels – because American law requires bourbon to be aged in new charred oak, every single time, which means America must throw the barrels away after one use.
And the rest of the world buys them.
Scotch does it. Rum does it. The entire flavour profile of two enormous global spirits is a downstream consequence of a legal requirement in a third country.
And in the Caribbean heat, rum ages perhaps three times faster than whisky does in Scotland – so a twelve-year rum has done something closer to the work of a thirty-year Scotch.
Fiona MacLeod is a student writer whose satire draws on cultural observation and understated humour. Influenced by London’s academic and creative spaces, Fiona’s writing reflects curiosity and thoughtful comedic restraint.
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