Finally...
Today I finally got to try the vanilla that I planted in the ground almost 6 years ago. Even though the bottle date says otherwise, this vanilla was actually pollinated almost 3 years ago.
It takes almost 9 months after pollinating for a vanilla bean (technically a pod) to be mature enough to harvest. After harvesting, it takes almost another 6-9 months to ferment and then fully cure (depending on how traditional you want to be with the cure). After that, it takes an additional 9 months to a year of soaking in vodka to get a concentration high enough to be considered vanilla.
This being my first attempt at curing (or at least 2 years ago it was), I know I could have cured them longer and gotten more potency. We have a mother that this was decanted off off where we put 20 beans into 2 liters of vodka.
My partner and I did a testing today and I have to say it was magical. We compared it with the Costco brand Madagascar vanilla and it completely blew it away in terms of flavor... if the Costco vanilla was more concentrated (probably I didn't cure my beans fully).
It was much.. brighter and much more floral than the Costco vanilla. Also, and it wasn't until we went back and forth between the Costco and our vanilla to compare a few times, but because we now had this much higher quality vanilla to compare to, we actually started tasting off notes in the Costco vanilla. Which was interesting because we have noticed that before,but thought it was something else. After tasting ours, and comparing it, we could clearly taste a 'moldy' or forest floor flavor in the Costco that ours didn't have any hint of.
So just posting because this is an accomplishment almost 6+ years in the making. The number of beans harvested has gone up every year and this year we probably had 20x the number of flowers of previous years because our vines are finally becoming fully mature. We're hoping to have enough to actually sell some (just cured beans) starting maybe holiday season this year.
Thank you for engaging with this post.
Td
(! necessary gratuitous vanilla flower and vine shots)
Amazing! Would an ultrasonic agitator, fine blending or automated stirrer accelerate dissolving the vanillin or whatever alkaloids are needed into alcohol? What about more pure ethanol with less water?
Love the work
You need a balance of water and alcohol. I use 50/50 everclear and distilled water.
You can buy the beans in bulk on Amazon, it's not even in the same league as getting fresh beans that haven't been shipped but it's light years beyond anything you're going to buy that comes in a bottle.
You can buy a pound of beans for like $100 and with that You can spoil yourself rotten for the rest of your days or start churning out amazing gifts in 9 months.
What does the water do?
Do you do this regularly? I'm a total noob to extraction and its been a ton of work to just get this far. I'd love to team up with someone more experienced than myself in the extraction part of the process. You can see mine isn't as dark as like, store bought.
I've only been doing it for a couple of years, and I'm nothing even vaguely approaching an expert. What you are doing is fucking legendary though and I'm super inspired.
I have had the best luck with everclear and distilled water instead of vodka because for some reason vodka always adds its own flavor that fights the awesome complex of flavors you get from the beans.
I think the water is essential too because the flavor is more than just the parts that are alcohol soluble. I find the home extracted stuff is ready to use in 6months but is done in 9 and that unlike the store bought stuff, it doesn't seem possible to over do it. Sometimes I add it straight to milk or soda and regret nothing.
Not really sure how dark it is supposed to be but the difference between 6 months and 9 months is noticeable. I'm doing 10 beans per liter and I get three full extractions before I break the beans down for bean paste and soap.
Well if you ever want to colab, let me know. Because I know many growers I can get vanilla from many of the different regions here, which with our elevation gradient, its pretty diverse where people grow.
Oh my God I super want to collaborate. I don't know what I can do to help but I have lots of bottles, cabinets and spirits!
If you're a fan of whiskey I would recommend throwing an old bean and a bit of charred white oak into a bottle it's decadent and lovely.
After you've extracted the beans there are so many things that you can do with them like adding it to apple butter or other jams and preserves. Slow cooked sweets really get every last drop of that tasty goodness out and somebody ends up with the bean in their jar. It's a win for everybody.
Psyched bruh 🤙 . Mark this and its going to be like.. months till I've got some to ship out/ sale ('25s beans). And 25 wasn't the biggest year for us. This year (26's) wont be harvested till october/ november, but I've got WAY more beans coming in this year, like its our first "hey this is almost enough to run a stand at the farmers market around the holidays" quantity of beans. And so I should continue to get more and more and more beans every year, but the flywheel for fully cured beans is pretty delayed.
So idk up to you how you want to proceed. Other collaborations I"m doing on lemmy we usually take it to the DM's then e-mail. But we got a while before I'll need to ship you something.