Before Gregor Thormann began his apprenticeship as a distiller, he spent three years in the Navy. It was here that he discovered his love of rum. The question of why there is no German rum occupied him throughout his apprenticeship years. A visit to a distillery in the Spreewald that actually produced German rum finally inspired Gregor Thormann to release a German rum that combined the traditional production process of the Caribbean with German technology. The result was our Grasbrook.
The name giver of our rum is that mystical place near Hamburg, where in former times an execution place for pirates was located. The legendary Klaus Störtebeker also met his death there.
Our Grasbrook combines flavors of vanilla and light caramel, paired with tropical fruits and licorice. The strong rum flavor and burnt sugar taste that caresses the tongue makes the Grasbrook so special and unique.
The molasses comes from smaller factories in Nicaragua and Guatemala. Thus, the molasses is still rich in flavors and natural components. During fermentation, we also rely on the help of wild yeasts. Although these do not produce as much alcohol as pure cultured yeasts, they do produce more aromas. Since the Bergstrasse is a wine-growing region, there are many wild yeast strains in the air, all of which contribute different flavors to the rum. The mash is later over-inoculated with a sparkling wine yeast, which then improves the yield. Distillation proceeds very slowly to allow as many pleasant aromas as possible to pass into the distillate.
We store Grasbrook in unused American white oak barrels. The advantage of American white oak is that it contains up to ten times more vanillin than its European relatives. The vanillin perfectly matches the taste of our rum distillate. We use only new barrels to benefit from the typical flavors of American white oak. At the same time, we avoid extraneous flavors from other products that may have previously been in the barrel. We toast the staves with a very low flame for a longer period of time instead of briefly coking the barrel with a high flame. Only with a prolonged exposure to temperature are the vanillin and saccharin, which provide the sweet toffee flavor, broken down. In addition, less smoke aromas get into the wood this way.
