Appleton Dark 151 Overproof Rum

Originally Posted 25 December 2010.  Photo courtesy of Chip Dykstra’s Rum Howler Blog

Let’s assume that there is a place where goodness reigns, the evil get punished, all kittens get rescued from trees and lotteries are won by the deserving. Trust me when I tell you that the Appleton 151 does not hail from here. This raging brown liquid is the Rum of Sauron. No, it’s Sauron’s dark effluent after he drinks the Rum of Sauron. Wussie whiskies such as the cask strength 60-percenters run crying to their mommies when the 151 approaches.

Appleton 151 is a dark, sinful, bottled morals charge, a mischievous indecent wink against our perceptions of rum. It takes no prisoners, expresses itself in four letter words, and is unashamedly, unapologetically vulgar. It’s a barbarian trying to eat with a knife and fork. You show this fella in public, you’ll either be arrested on sight or be accosted on every street corner being furtively, wistfully or eagerly asked “Where the hell can I get me some of that?”

The 151 series from any maker may be the ne plus ultra of “standard” overpoofs¹. Rums like this will never really be made fresh or new again. While I may be exaggerating just a smidgen, it is my considered opinion that distilling and blending techniques have now gotten sophisticated enough for overproofs to be taken seriously as drinks in their own right, and not just bases and mixers and cooking ingredients. You see, although generations of gleeful blenders and traumatized drinkers think otherwise, the purpose of an overproof is not really to cause you pain or get you drunk: it’s to deliver a concentrated flavor unobtainable anywhere else, at any other strength. And maybe to make a real bitchin’ cocktail.

As an example, take the Appleton’s nose. I wouldn’t recommend this, but this is what I did and you’re welcome to try: take a hearty sniff of this sour Klingon sweat. A massively alcoholic man-eating lion will leap fiercely at your defenseless snoot. You will fall back, feet excavating spade sized trenches from the ground, pounding frantically on your chest, not the least because your breastbone feels like it’s now somewhere behind your spine. Once the fire goes out and the spirit fumes have finished raping your beak, in between bouts of delirium you will remember that there was a deep caramel taste, a cinnamon shot, and a scratch of vanilla. Really. Personally, I think you’d be lucky to find your sinuses again (ever), but you see what I mean? The nose is a Godzilla of flavor if you stick with it and move through the pain.

Knowing it was my duty to take one for the team and complete the review in an appropriately stiff-upper-lip fashion, I sipped it when I managed to draw a thimble of oxygen into my seared chest and the uranium spill in my lungs reached its natural half life. This roughly equates to rapidly following up stupidity with an act of irredeemable idiocy. You’d think by now I’d learn to mix this stuff, but no…I had to take the taste neat, and a good sized one at that. Never let it be said, guys, that I wasn’t there for you when it counted.

Big friggin’ mistake. A lake of fire exploded. The sobriety I had fondly embraced became the sobriety I had just left behind. There was a concussive cchuuuff of vanilla, caramel and light citrus that scaped across my tongue just before I lost track of ten minutes of my life in one searing amnesiac flash. My tongue writhed like a serpent doing a rain dance, my tonsils vapourized, and my head spun as rapidly as if I had just been hooked up to the high-speed paint shaker at Home Depot. I lost twenty IQ points, and I swear the Appleton 151 caused my DNA to devolve on the spot. Ugh mug kook aagh.

I don’t know about you, but me, I gave up. Forget nose, forget taste, forget finish. Like all highly overproofed rums out there, there’s simply no point to it. It’s got a ferocious taste, sure, but let’s be honest: the 151 is not meant to be a garden party sipper or socializing enabler. Tasting notes are pointless here.

Because, guys, come on: all of you who are reading this and snickering, none of you ever tried this stuff for its bouquet, or aroma or its elegant fade, redolent of whatever-the-hell-they-added. You didn’t drink it because your Tanti Merle made a great Black Cake from it, and her eggnog was to die for. You drank it because you were young, because you were high on life, and because you wanted to get loaded as fast as possible. Because it was your passport to manhood among The Boys, because Grampi always had it, because la petite femme over there on the floor of the bottom-house Old Years party was giving you the eye and might kiss you later if she thought you had some balles. You drank it then because it was your rite of passage to all other rums that came after, and you drink it now because you want to remember the bright sharp days of your youth when the world was an apple in your mouth. So forget this review. Just put it away, pour a shot and enjoy taking your drinking experience to the wild extreme of unreason.

(#061)(Unscored)

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Other Notes

• For additional details on the history and development of 151 overproof rums, this article provides all the background
• Also, for reference, here’s a list of the most powerful rums in the world, starting at 70% ABV and working up.
• It is unclear whether as of 2021, this rum continues to be made. Certainly it remains available, but I think that with the rise of cask strength bottlings from around the world, it may have been quietly discontinued without fanfare.

1. Because as of the late 2010s so many independent bottlers are making cask- or still-strength rums, the word “standard” is a useful term to summarize rums which adhere to a single reference point of proof, 151 in this case.