You have probably heard of CBD, and its potential benefits. With any new trend that has potential of making a lot of money, you will always find good brands, and others who are only in for the money. It is estimated that the UK CBD market will be worth £1 billion by 2025 so I guess we can say CBD is the new hype!

Rebecca and I recently tried some CBD infused rums, made by a brand called Top Beverages, based in the UK. They have three in their rum range; a spiced, a white and a mocha rum, all infused with this ‘magical’ herb oil referred to as CBD.

As far as our CBD spirit experience goes, we’ve only tried Dead Man’s Fingers Hemp rum, which we did not enjoy. We thought that it lost its rum character, and tasted more like a herbal spirit than a rum.

Top Beverages CBD rums, which are under their Top CBD spirits line, luckily was different. You could definitely tell it is a rum-based spirit. We would say that a lot of it had to do with the fact that the rum is batch distilled and bottled at 54.5% ABV. We did not try the base rum itself, unfortunately, which is shame, as we thought it would be pretty tasty.

Top Beverages says that their CBD infused rum contains 2.5 mg per 25 ml as their final measurement. They did a a lab test and found that Dead Man’s Fingers Hemp rum had only 2.8 mg in their 700 ml bottle, which seems pretty low in comparison.

As rum enthusiasts, we obviously wanted to know about the rum used! As many new brands, their rum is distilled in Europe (usually the UK or Scotland). Theirs is distilled in Arbroath, in Scotland, and made from molasses. They have a fairly long fermentation, where they use two types of yeast, and the process lasts for 3 weeks.

The rum is double distilled in a hybrid still, which is a pot still with copper plates, a popular type of still used by distilleries nowadays, which you could say brings the best bits out of the column and pot worlds, in terms of flavour and efficiency.

At the end of distillation, the rum comes off the still at 78% ABV, which is lower that we would expect, but that’s a good thing! Base spirits used for flavoured rum are usually nearer the higher end of the 95% allowed, which tends to strip out most of the rummy goodness.

Once distillation is complete, the rum is diluted to the desired ABV, and is not aged, which is pretty common for this category. Apart from the natural ingredients, there are no colour or additives.

The CBD infusion makes the spirit look cloudy, which is much more obvious with their white rum, which is milky in appearance.

We definitely thought that their CBD infused rum was unusual, but actually quite flavourful, and with a nice kick. A mix of funk and slight herbal notes.

The CBD used is THC free, which means that it is not addictive. Apparently “on its own CBD can have anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory properties, when infused with alcohol, it could have benefits on the negative aspects that alcohol consumption brings”, but there is no conclusive research yet on the effect of the combination.

Top Beverages are looking on how to get better regulation around CBD in spirits and also pushing for more research to be done in order to help promote its potential benefits.

Our favourite out of the three was the one with cacao, which starts with the ‘funkiness’ of the rum, followed by the herbal notes from the CBD and nice spicy, chocolatey notes, and ending with a medium finish.

The rum industry never ceases to surprise us, both in good and bad ways. Many brand are trying to cash on the new rum craze, as the sales market has now reportedly reached £1 billion.

It’s good to have a new flavoured product that is actually interesting, we can say we have not come across many.

If you want to find out more, you can check out their website. They do deliver to the UK and the price is pretty reasonable.

Until next time, keep rumming!