In order to make your own homemade spiced rum, you obviously need to start with a bottle of rum! Nothing expensive here, cheapest supermarket rum will be good enough as you will be changing the flavour with strong spices. We recommend dark rum as some flavourings are already there.
Pour a shot glass worth of rum off the top of the bottle to make some headspace. (Don’t forget to make a quality check of course!).
Now add in a Vanilla Pod, star anise, cloves (don’t go mad here, 2 or 3 is plenty), a cinnamon stick and a piece of orange zest. Look on the world food aisles for your spices, they tend to come in larger packs for half the cost.
Replace the cap and leave in a cool dark place for as long as possible. It will be hard not to take cheeky samples (ask me how I know) but you only have to wait a week. Don’t leave it too long just in case you forget all about it.
After a week give it a sample and if it is to your liking then it can be strained into a clean empty bottle. If you think it needs longer then just leave it, there really aren’t any hard and fast rules here. If you don’t think it will be lasting very long then there is no need to strain the solids off. I’ve found cloves to be the hardest spice to control so if you’re not overly fond of it, either just put one piece in your bottle or leave it out altogether.
Make a note of the spices you’ve used and adjust the ratios for next time you make homemade spiced rum. There is no reason why you shouldn’t try your hand at making spiced gin, spiced brandy, etc. Take a look at our page Homemade Liqueurs for some more ideas of what you can do or visit the BBC Good Food pages for even more tips.
The tasting notes for Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum only mention vanilla and caramel, whilst those for Red Leg Spiced Rum mention vanilla, ginger and warm spices. Lidls sell a well priced rum called Captain Cook’s Smooth & Spiced Original, fairly strong on the vanilla flavourings but excellent with a mixer.
Mark’s Top Tip: I’ve recently found a recipe for Mulled Gin. Guess what? Super simple, just replace the rum with gin which now opens up a whole range of alternatives for you to try, mulled vodka, mulled whisky, mulled brandy. I know what I’m going to be doing for the next few months.