vanilla?

Where is the post for the vanilla recipe? Thanks.

Tom S is the one your are looking for on that.
everclear,and pure vanilla beans are involved if I remember right.
how the heck are you Shawn?

Yup. Everclear 180. The 151 will work but the vanilla is less intense. For a liter bottle you’ll want 5-6 whole beans, fresh ones not the ones in a cellophane wrapper. I can check on availability again for you if you’re having problems locating the fresh beans. Let me know.

Slit the beans lengthwise then insert them in the bottle. Re-seal the bottle and keep in a paper bag in a dark cool closet for 6 months.

Iowaboy1 wrote:

Tom S is the one your are looking for on that.
everclear,and pure vanilla beans are involved if I remember right.
how the heck are you Shawn?

I’m doing Great!

Tom Sawvell wrote:

Yup. Everclear 180. The 151 will work but the vanilla is less intense. For a liter bottle you’ll want 5-6 whole beans, fresh ones not the ones in a cellophane wrapper. I can check on availability again for you if you’re having problems locating the fresh beans. Let me know.

Slit the beans lengthwise then insert them in the bottle. Re-seal the bottle and keep in a paper bag in a dark cool closet for 6 months.

Tom, I’m good on the beans. The last ones you sent me got soaked in a bottle o 190 proof Everclear. I just didn’t remember how long it took to get done. I had it written on the brown bag it would be ready May 10th 2019. Took it out today. Man does it smell good, not sure if I should take a swig or not?

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Take a real deep breath. Exhale hard, then inhale again real fast sniffing a pile of baking soda in your palm, then take the swig before exhaling. The baking soda helps you forget what you’re drinking.

By the way….it’s plenty ready. Better get more beans and 180 before Ma gets her mitts on it cause it won’t last long.

Thanks Tom. If I want to put in smaller containers and give away anything special I should know? Does a partial stalk of been need to go into say a pint jar? Does it need to stay in the dark yet? Thanks.

I passed on the baking soda trick. I’ll just try a small taste.

I’m grabbing a shot glass and sitting in on this one!

If you’re going to gift some I suggest half-pint canning jars like you’d use for jelly. You can add a half a bean to a jar for aesthetics and to strengthen the flavor with age. For our own use I bought a pint of Everclear and two beans maybe twenty years ago. It was allowed to “work” for the suggested time frame then went into the cupboard where Carole stores some of her larger spice bottles. It has beans from past liter bottles of vanilla in it to keep it up to snuff in the strength department and this bottle is what gets re-filled off the larger bottles when we need more for the kitchen. Otherwise, the bottles all stay in the bags in closets until smaller jars are filled as gifts. I tell people to keep the smaller jars in a cupboard where it stays fairly dark but our daughter-in-law has her’s in an open spice cupboard with no issues. I do things by force of habit.

I never pull the beans from any jug of this as long as its being tapped and as mentioned the smaller kitchen bottle has beans from batches maybe from ten years ago. Occasionally I’ll yank a half a bean from kitchen bottle to add to something I am cooking where it can be removed before the cooking it complete. I make frog-eye tapioca desert using three sizes of tapioca and a half a bean in the milk soak for the large pearl plus about a tablespoon of vanilla in the cooking mix. Just before the pudding starts to get thick I pull the bean and toss it. The flavor of the tapioca is incredible and nobody can quite guess how I get such intense vanilla flavor to it.

Right now I have two bottles that are ready to use in bags in the closet along with one that is used to re-fill the kitchen jug AND another full liter that needs another three months or so.

Denny. Add about a half a shot of this to two fingers on your pet sipping whiskey along with an ice cube or two. Its actually pretty smooth as long as the whiskey doesn’t have a bite.

Tom, how long will the vanilla last? Will it ever go bad? Thanks.

I think the only way it could go bad was if it caught on fire.

Tom, do you have a local source for the beans?

Keep the jug capped tight and store it in a dark environment and it’ll last for years, River.

Here in Rochester I use the Natural Foods store on the corner of 6th Street and 1st Avenue SW. They were at $4.99 / bean. Feel the beans to be sure they are fairly soft. I pass on hard beans and those that are pre-packaged.

There’s a Kitchen Gadget place in Duluth, Canal Park shopping district that sells vanilla beans in bulk too. Or there was a place there. I don’t get down in that area often. I think the beans there were $3.99/ bean.

This is my 1/2 pint “kitchen jug”. I keep this bottle filled from the full liter bottles. The beans one can see on the right side inside the bottle are about eight years old and still are working. The bottle itself is almost 30 years old. That’s the 4th cap I’ve had to find for it. There’s a little wear and tear on the bottle’s label but otherwise has been perfect for kitchen use size….its nothing but character. lol

“Will it ever go bad?”…..only better.

Nice, I want to make some of this. I see a store that sells only vanilla beans opened up near my house, I need to go get some. Thanks for the reminder.

I made some of this last year with bourbon and they turned out fantastic! I’m a bourbon lover so I had to go that route.

Another good option for gifts is to put them in ‘Boston Rounds‘.

You can get 2 oz or 4 oz bottles on amazon. 2 ounces is 12 teaspoons I believe, which ends up being like 10-20 baked items for most people, which is a good amount for a casual baker. If you’re gifting someone who bakes a lot, then maybe go for 4 oz or bigger.

Get a set of fancy looking labels and you have the makings of a nice homemade gift for someone!

So, i looked at my vanilla tonght. How woud this work for a hand sanitizer? Should be strong enough?

It would be but gas is cheaper and I would think the end result would be the same.

riverruns wrote:

So, i looked at my vanilla tonght. How woud this work for a hand sanitizer? Should be strong enough?

Its strong enough and you’d smell pretty. Black gnats and mosquitos wouldn’t bother you a bit.