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)
How sure can you be that DME bought on amazon will leave no residues? Are there food grade solvents anyone can buy?
you can distill it before use if you are so inclined, but it would take dry ice and somewhat specialized glassware (distillation of ammonia is more common and it would work just about the same way). there is food grade/cosmetics grade (99.99%) dme available. just in order to not deal with it i would use diethyl ether instead, which can be distilled with normal equipment
Asking the important questions.
It's specifically made for extraction and has zero impurities
Working in the chemical manufacturing industry here. There is no such thing as no impurities.