Denny's BVIP question

Mashing
1

I brewed this up a few weeks ago. This past weekend, it was time to add the vanilla beans and the question hit me…

How do I add the beans in a sterile fashion? I searched online, read Denny’s recipe several times looking for hints of technical info and found none.

Soooo, I donned a pair of latex gloves, soaked my hands, the knife and my cutting board in starsan then proceded to slice and dice the vanilla beans.

I then racked everything into a secondary. I am hoping this is OK and wont infect the brew because it looked and smelled so good already!

2

Should be ok. I’ve never went to those extremes with vanilla beans. Just wash my hands, cut 'em up and toss 'em in. Sometimes you can soak em in a little rum or vodka before hand (the beans that is, not your hands).

3

I simply split them lengthwise, scrape them and toss everything in. Between the alcohol content and low pH of the beer I’ve never had a problem.

4

The last time I made the BVIP, I soaked the pods in vodka for a few minutes before splitting them, scraping the beans out, cutting up the pods and throwing everything in the fermenter. As Denny said, wholly unnecessary I am sure, but I did get a nice shot of vanilla infused vodka and a little extra peace of mind out of it.