Hello fellow brewers,
I am currently working with 1 gallon extract recipes, and I am ordering the WH porter for the next batch.
My question is about altering the recipe for a little experiment. My neighbor is a baker and has some extra grade B Madagascar vinilla beans that she has offered me for brewing. So what I am really looking for is advice on when to add these beans to the beer? Is boil, flame out, or after primary better?
I am ordering 2 WH extract recipe kits so I can run the experiment, and compare the two brews side by side.
You can either make a tincture by scraping the insides out of the beans and put it in a container covered with vodka for a few days or just put the scraped out stuff right into your secondary and rack the beer onto it.
The nice thing about the tincture is you can add a little at a time to taste.
Vanilla is a great flavor but it does not age well. Don’t bother putting this experiment in the vault to age.
I agree about the tincture. BUT, I always am able to taste the higher alcohol burn associated with distilled alcohol.
I scrape the bean, set that aside, cut up the actual bean to increase surface area and add it all in a nylon bag.
But as @squeegeethree said, vanilla ages out pretty quickly.
I started using bourbon for vanilla tincture, particularly with a porter it works better than vodka IMO. I do two beans, scraped and quartered in a bourbon tincture for about a week before kegging, then pour the bourbon directly into the keg.
Rad
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Thanks you all for your help on this one. Looking forward to this one.
