DIY

Ever get tired of spending a small fortune on those wee bottles of vanilla? There’s a solution for that: do it yourself.


It’s a simple concept, really, but one that never really hits the front side of the braincase. Until you read a thread at a forum somewhere about making your own vanilla extract, which sounds like a fabulous idea, and that sends you off hunting down large amounts of reasonably priced vanilla beans for processing into extract. Oh, and which results in a huge bottle of vodka making an appearance. Not that I can drink any longer (it burns! it burns!), but that doesn’t stop others from taking some here and there for their own purposes.

Step one: the beans.

It takes quite a few beans to make a decent amount of extract. Paying six bucks a bean defeats the purpose of the project, so I tracked down a place that sells the beans in bulk. Like this.

That’s a pound of extract-grade beans (also suitable for cooking). Cheap, too. That bag cost twenty bucks, including shipping.

Step two: the mixing.

When you get right down to it, making extract is a hideously simple process. Put the beans in alcohol, and then age the mixture, giving it a shake every few days. A pound of vanilla beans is a hell of a lot of beans, as you can see – about 120 or so pods.

Step three: the result.

I separated 30 beans from the pile. Twenty of those were split and scraped, and the other ten were just cut in half. All of them were put into a quart mason jar, and the jar was topped off with the alcohol.

The rest of the beans were packed away for other uses as they come to me. After nine days in a cool place, shaken every few days, the mixture still smelled a bit alcohol-y, but it was taking on that distinct vanilla extract smell, and it was noticeably darker.

This will need to age for at least a few months before it’s ready to be used in anything. Still, this whole quart cost about fifteen bucks or so, and it’s another one of those “One day I will do/see/make…” things off the list.

5 thoughts on “DIY”

  1. there ya go! 😉

    can you let us know where you got the beans? vanilla has so many good uses – i can think of many!

  2. The seller is Vanilla Products USA – they have an ebay store, so do a search for that and you’ll find them. They have a couple of different grades and beans from different areas.

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