Don Q

Puerto Rican Rum

by Brian Donnelly

Parent Company: Distilería Serrallés, Inc

Location: Ponce, Puerto Rico

Master Blender: Silvia Santiago

Established: 1865

Fun Fact: Don Q® holds an overwhelming strong majority of the Puerto Rican domestic rum market.

Don Q® is a Spanish style rum that receives its name from the eponymous protagonist in Miguel Cervantes’s classic novel Don Quixote. Puerto Rican Distilleries, as a US territory must adhere to the following organizations: ATF, FDA, EPA, Kosher, US Department of Labor, and many more. Don Q® aged rums have no added sugar.

Base Material 

The base material for all Don Q® rum is molasses. First, the sugar cane, sourced from Guatemala and Brazil, is crushed, and the juice is boiled, so that the crystallized sugar is extracted, and only the molasses remains. 

Water 

Río Inabón

Fermentation & Yeast

The living yeast strain used in the fermentation process dates back over 75 years, and is unique to Don Q®. The fresh water from the Río Inabón is used to dilute the molasses for fermentation, then the yeast converts the sugars from the molasses into alcohol. CO2 is naturally released, but rather than letting it escape into the atmosphere, the distillery captures the CO2 from fermentation, and makes it available to local soft drink producers. This is just one of many ways the Don Q distillery decreases their carbon footprint during production. The lighter rums in the collection receive a shorter fermentation, between 40-44 hours. While the heavy rums, receive a longer fermentation, around 4 weeks.

Distillation

The lighter rums at Don Q® are distilled in a large multi-column still with five stills to 189 proof (94.5% ABV). Heavier rums are distilled 1x in a Vendome Still made by the Vendome Copper and Brass Company, which they purchased from Louisville back in the early 1930s, to reach 150 proof (75% ABV). The 5 still multi-column still functions in the following manner: the 1st still separates the alcohol from water, then the distillate is diluted and redistilled in the 2nd still, in a process called hydro-selection. Next the distillate is moved to the 3rd still to separate the heads and tails, before the 4th still removes methanol from the final distillate, and the last still captures the waste alcohols from the production process and processed them into a recyclable form. 

Maturation 

Following Puerto Rican law, all Don Q® rums are aged at least one year in American white oak barrels. The Angels Share loss is around 8-10%. Don Q® uses exclusively twice-used whiskey barrels, which have been previously used to mature bourbon and Canadian whiskey. The distillery maintains around 95,000 barrels aging in 9 rackhouses. All the barrels are kept standing vertically with no climate control. Following maturation, Head Blender, Silvia Santiago, meticulously blends lighter and darker rums together depending on the specific expression. Every batch of rum will be examined by her, before bottling. All bottling is done on-site at the distillery.

Environmental Sustainability

Don Q® is one of the most environmentally sustainable distilleries in the region, if not the world. This is largely due to one man, Roberto Serrallés, the VP of Business Development. Roberto holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the University of Oregon, and left his former career in education, to become the Director of Environmental Risk Management for Distilería Serrallés. Roberto is an industry pioneer when it comes to greener distilling practices, most notably in his solving the wastewater situation at the distillery. The distillery has completely eliminated the dumping of wastewater into the ocean, which is unfortunately a common practice for rum distilleries in the Caribbean. Don Q® rum is a proud partner of the Surfrider Foundation, and supports efforts that promote clean and healthy ocean environments.

The wastewater from the rum production process first goes through a process called, anaerobic digesters, where the wastewater is sealed in an airtight chamber, and a specialized bacteria consumes the raw waste before the water is oxidized. This process drastically reduces the wastewater’s organic contents. The bacteria releases a volatile, but valuable compound called biogas, which is captured and concentrated. The biogas then powers the boilers which produce the steam for distillation. By using biogas, the distillery eliminates between 50-70% demand for annual oil usage (about 2 million gallons of crude oil per year). In addition to powering the distillation columns, the steam passes through a turbo-generator, which powers the majority of electricity demands at the distillery. After undergoing anaerobic digesters and micro-filtration, the wastewater is safe for agricultural irrigation and industrial usage.

Please Drink Responsibly.

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