So my parents think I drank their rum. As a rough and tough college student,I can understand why they might come to this conclusion. But I didn’t. So if I didn’t do it, the person I had over didn’t do it, and my 17 year old sister didn’t it, I’m lost as to what happened.
My parents evidence of tampering is that their Rum looks as if someone took a swig, backwashed, and tried to fill it back up with water. Now, it does look wierd. As far as I can remember, the Rum was clear. Now it is cloudy. To me, it looks as if the Rum has “pulp” in it. There is obviously material floating in it, so I don’t know
Any idea how this might have happened? Any ideas that could spare me a lifetime of skeptical glares?
I don’t know how rum could turn pulpy on its own without a foreign substance being added, however, can’t they just buy more rum? Hell, can’t you just buy them more rum? What’s the problem here?
I’d imagine that it depends on the container and quality of the rum.
My guess is no, though. Maybe a really cheap plastic container could deteriorate under the high-proof conditions of rum, or a really low quality rum could have some weird impurities in it, but I’ve seen bottles of rum that have been opened for years maintain clarity.
-Electronic Chaos, who really loves him some rum.
Was the rum purchased while traveling? I had a bottle of very questionable rum purchased in the Caribbean; I can see it going funky, as it is funky to begin with.
The more important question then becomes, who puked in the clothes hamper?
Really? That was the easiest way for this only child (no older siblings, no older friends) to do it back in the day.
As an herbalist, I’m always concerned with the alcohol content of my herbal extracts. Get below 30%, and things start growing in there. “Things” like bacteria colonies. They will make a cloud, haze, or bizzare floaty sculptures in the bottle. The easiest way to get bacteria in your bottle, as you guess, is to take a swig off a low-proof bottle.
There’s a slight chance that the bottle was left open and enough alcohol evaporated off, and then some airborne bacteria landed in it and started growing, but the narrow mouth of the bottle makes it unlikely.
It’s possible that there was bacterial contamination in the bottle from bottling, but it’s unlikely that the bacteria would have survived in full strength rum. That’s why rum was made in the first place - as a way to preserve water on bacteria laden sea vessels. It’s also unlikely that it would have been clear for a long time, then suddenly cloudy if the bacteria had been in there all along.
So, yeah, my guess is your parents are right. Someone took a drink, watered the rum down to make up the volume (thus lowering the % of alcohol to dangerous levels), and the bacteria from their lips found a yummy new home and food source.
(They know this, of course, because it’s exactly what they did to their parents’ rum when they were teenagers. It’s the Circle of Life. But it’s probably not wise to point it out.) All things being equal (which it never is in parenting) it seems more logical to me to suspect the younger teen, rather than the college student who presumably knows other college students who might buy his booze. But if you have a wild reputation with your parents, you may not win this one.
