Rumbelbeet
Recipe Anno xxx
Rumbelbeet is a new class of distilled products, developed by Sas Distilleries.
The whole story stems from the desire to innovate, to use local products, and to craft distill.
Sas Distilleries has had a rum in its range since 2015, Charlesville, the only rum distilled on Belgian territory to date, as far as is known. Charlesville Rum is based on an old recipe from the early 1800s. Rum is defined in regulation 110/2008 as a product obtained from sugar cane products, a crop that cannot be grown locally.
During the COVID19 lockdown from March – June 2020, we at Sas Distilleries reflected on the importance of local products from local raw materials, and came up with the idea to create an analogous product from beet sugar molasses instead of cane sugar molasses.
However, this product cannot bear the name ‘rum’, so we named it ‘rumbelbeet’:
With ‘rumbel’ we reference ‘rumbullion’, an English slang term for tumult, commotion, a term from which rum likely derives its origin. With our drink, we aim to surprise the connoisseur of distilled beverages, turn their world upside down, or ‘shake it up’.
‘bel’ as a reference to a typical Belgian product from a Belgian raw material
‘beet’ from sugar beet, also known as beetroot
The fermentation and distillation of sugar beet products is not new in itself, this has already been carried out on a large scale for the production of bio-ethanol, a plant-based fuel.
At Sas Distilleries, we have decided to create a quality distilled drink with a unique flavour, a full-fledged alternative to classic rum, and entirely from local sources.
The history of the sugar beet as a raw material for sugar is also quite remarkable.
Until the beginning of the 19th century, Europe met its domestic demand for sugar with the yield of sugar cane from the colonies in Asia and America, but the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon meant that an alternative raw material for sugar had to be found. The Continental Blockade in 1806 halted European trade in cane sugar.
In 1747, a German chemist, Andreas Margraff, had already developed a process to produce sugar from beet juice. His pupil, Karl Achard, further improved this process and by 1802 he had started an experimental sugar factory in Germany. This was a success and several factories were established in Germany around this. The French were impressed and soon adopted the process. Napoleon ordered the farmers in his empire, mainly in Belgium and the Netherlands, to use several thousand hectares of agricultural land for sugar beet cultivation.
After the trade blockade, cane sugar returned to the market, and it took until 1848 in Belgium and until 1860 in the Netherlands for beet sugar to really break through. This was because slavery was abolished and the sugar cane plantations lost their free labour, causing the price of cane sugar to rise enormously. As a result, beet sugar production immediately became very profitable. Since then, the cultivation of sugar beets and beet sugar production has become increasingly important in our regions.
The image on the label, ‘Mr. Rumbelbeet’, is based on a 19th-century advertisement for cosmetics, presumably inspired by the work of Amédée Varin - L'Empire des légumes.
