Homemade Vanilla Extract

Making your own vanilla extract is surprisingly easy.  Just take several beans, chop them into 1/2 inch pieces, and place the beans in a pint of high quality liquor.  The choice is yours, but the less taste the liquor imparts, the better.  Vodka is the usual choice, but rum and brandy can be used.  Vodka is about 40% alcohol, or 80 proof.

Some people prefer to slice the beans open lengthwise.  Slicing lengthwise takes more time, and by chopping the beans you increase the surface area of the beans and reduce the time it takes to make the vanilla extract.

You can try making extract from Planifolia and Tahitian vanilla beans as well, and you can use extract grade or prime gourmet grade beans.

If you choose to use 100% alcohol (DON'T use isopropyl alcohol or any other type of alcohol not meant for human consumption, it can kill you), add two parts distilled water for each part alcohol.  Otherwise, the beans will dry out (it will NOT speed up the extract process).  The term "made with 100% grain neutral spirits" does not mean that the contents are 100% alcohol.  The bottle should have the alcohol content listed.

Shake the bottle once a day for about a month.  Voila!  Homemade vanilla extract.

Exactly how many beans should you use?  By law, commercial producers of vanilla extract must use at least 0.8 pounds of beans for every gallon that they produce.  A gallon is 128 ounces, and a pint is 1/8 of a gallon, so you would want to use at least 0.1 pounds of vanilla beans, or 1.6 ounces.

However, commercial producers have a more sophisticated production method than just chopping the beans and shaking them in a bottle.  We suggest using more beans in order to ensure that you get a strong enough extract when you are done - at least two ounces of beans for a pint of extract.

We sell beans by the ten pack as well as by weight.  The weight of a ten pack varies depending upon the species, quality (gourmet or extract grade), and length.  For our typical 6 to 7 inch varieties, the weight varies from around 1.3 ounces per 10 pack for Planifolia Extract grade beans to about 1.8 ounces for Planifolia Gourmet.

A nice way to get started is to buy our 30 vanilla bean assortment that you can find in our store (it contains 10 each of Madagascar Gourmet, Madagascar Extract, and Tahitian Grade A vanilla beans) and buy a pint of vodka.  Split the vodka into three separate containers and put 10 beans of each variety into each of the separate containers.  Make sure that the beans are completely covered by the vodka or else the part that is exposed will dry out.  This is probably more beans than you need, but you don't want weak extract (too strong is ok).

Most commercial vanilla extract comes sweetened.  This helps cut the alcohol smell.  You can do the same by adding some corn syrup or sugar water - about 10% by volume.

How do you know when the extract is done?  Smell is one way, and another way is by the color - it should be a nice deep amber color.  You can't compare the color to what you buy at the store because they often add coloring agents.