# You may never want to drink rum again

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-never-want-to-drink-rum-again/355512>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [May 5, 2006, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-never-want-to-drink-rum-again/355512 "2006-05-05T08:23:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2006, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-never-want-to-drink-rum-again/355512/21 "2006-05-07T16:25:27Z")

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Funny how the flavor of the rum in these stories never seems to be too adversely affected by extended periods of carcass-induced contamination. I would have thought that an entire human corpse’s worth of skin dander, sebaceous discharges, gastroenteric leakage, lung mucus, eyeball seepage and other diverse secretions would tend to make even the most robust brew conspicuously skunky after awhile, but evidently not.

The Hungarian story even goes out of its way to emphasize how the workers in question thought the rum was so amazingly delicious that they took some bottles home with them. You’d imagine that at least one of these cadaver-kegger stories would be like,\* “They were immediately revulsed at the rum’s putrid odor, not to mention the thick wads of greasy hair that repeatedly clogged the tap. Being desperately poor Hungarian alcoholics, however, they reluctantly drank it anyway.”\*

Next time I buy some rum, I’m going to have to remember to mix in some of my dirty bathwater, just as an experiment. Maybe these urban legends do contain a grain of truth, and sloughed-off human residue is actually a secret flavor enhancer taught only to 33rd-Level Bartenders.

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**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2006, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-never-want-to-drink-rum-again/355512/22 "2006-05-07T18:16:17Z")

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Reuters is somewhat unreliable as a news organization. Its employees tend to jump the gun a lot to be first with information, but seem to never have heard of the multiple-source rule.

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**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2006, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-never-want-to-drink-rum-again/355512/23 "2006-05-07T18:22:07Z")

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[QUOTE=tomndebb]  
And it is not even a new UL: [They were “tapping” Nelson 200 years ago.](http://home.xnet.com/~warinner/nelson.html)  
[/QUOTE]

I remember reading that in one of Jan Harold Brunvand’s book years and years ago. I’d heard the UL years before and thougth it was true.

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**Author:** ![corkboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@corkboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/corkboard)\
**Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-never-want-to-drink-rum-again/355512/24 "2006-05-09T13:43:36Z")

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Just for the record:

[Link](http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2006-05-09T120508Z_01_L09600198_RTRUKOC_0_US-HUNGARY-ADVISORY.xml&src=rss)

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