Dakabend Rum

Edgar makes DAKABEND in the Tosba palenque using much of the same equipment that he uses for their mezcal. The one major difference is that they hand feed sugar cane into a crusher (see the short video below). Then they take the resulting juice and ferment it in the tinas that they use for their mezcal.

The cane comes from their own plots and purchases from across the community. Some of it is co-cropped with the agaves that will eventually be used in Mezcal Tosba. Elisandro Gonzalez told me that they’re “collaborating with a guy, Gil, who has his own rum. Eventually we’ll release his rum as part of this project so that you can taste each aguardientero’s idea. Each tastes different, each has its own level of funkiness.”

The aguardiente season follows the sugar cane season so it runs from about February to April depending on when the warm weather kicks off the season and the rains close it. When they get their first batch of sugar cane, they crush it and then add the juice to the tinas and wait. The first batch can take two weeks to begin fermenting, occasionally longer.

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