Hi there,
A quick question regarding the use of vanilla – I’ve noticed plenty of people with examples of success using vanilla beans in their beers. Is there any glaring reason that brewers aren’t looking to pre-made vanilla extract instead of beans, other than the desire to avoid pre-mades and other extracts in general? It seems extract would be a far more consistent and predictable alternative, at least for a first-timer.
Andy
For me, I tend to make my own extracts at home for the primary reason, I can control the beans that go into it.
So for instance I know that I’ve got high quality Bourbon beans adn Tahitian beans in my extracts.
In that case, where do you get your beans from, and how can you verify quality? If not consistency brew-to-brew?
I used to get mine from organic-vanilla.com but they’ve seemingly gone out of business.
I don’t usually worry about super accuracy in the extract since I’ll just adjust the amount to taste in the final product.
do a search of the forum for vanilla beans… Denny and some others have some favorite sites they always recommend.
Thanks, I picked up a small bottle of Madagascar extract and a few beans to try my luck with from Beanilla. I’ll let you know how it goes!
The best vanilla beans and extract I’ve found come from hawaiianvanilla.com .