RiversC174

Recipes 

Brewing a Vanilla Weizen tomorrow afternoon and it only came with one vanilla bean to add to the secondary. I was looking for a fairly strong but not overpowering vanilla flavor to the brew. A bit more than the aroma/aftertaste the kit advertises. Should I just use another vanilla bean or two? Or go with a few drops of vanilla extract? Thanks in advance.

Joe

homebrewer_99

Recipes 

I've seen recipes that use 1 bean in the primary and 1 in the secondary. Use your 1 bean now and go hunting for the second.

I would not use the vanilla extract unless it was REAL vanilla like from Mexico.

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HB Bill

beyondthepale

Recipes 

I recently made a coffee porter with vanilla. I used two beans, and got more vanilla presence than I had actually been aiming for. I think that one bean would add a noticeable vanilla aspect, but two should definately give you that vanilla flavor you want. I don't think I'd do more than three, and that only if you want vanilla to be the prominent flavor of the beer.

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Monster Mash

Recipes 

You will only need one bean, cut it lenghtwise scrape and soak it in a shot of your favorite alcohol, I use 12 y/o scotch. I added 2 beans to a stout thinking since it was a stout it could use a little extra and it was too much.

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Cheesefood

Recipes 

I used Bourbon Vanilla for my latest vanilla beer, and it turned out better than I had anticipated. Bought a big bottle of it at Costco for $8.00. It's (supposedly) real vanilla extract.

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Lil' Sparky

Recipes 

How much extract did you use?

digdan

Recipes 

When I use beans I split them, or score them and let the sit in the secondary. The primary fermentation process will "scrub" the bean and leave littel original (fresh) flavor in your beer. I also transfer the bean into the keg, but if you bottle it should still be just as good. I also buy my vanilla beans from Arizona Vanilla Company because its fresh and cheap. They had a free shipping special and I spent $3.50 on two fresh clean perfect beans (pretty good since I spend $6 on apricot flavoring). I know you can find cheaper, or more beans on ebay for that price... but I like have a solid sorce, and its not that bad of a price.

Split them, and soak them in beer. The alcohol and mild fermentation of the secondary should extract enough flavor to be subtle yet expected(1 bean per 5 gallons in secondary).


Thats my two cents

RiversC174

Recipes 

By the way, the way I added the vanilla bean was like this:

Cut bean down the middle, scraped it out as best I could, cut bean up into 1/4" pieces, added all to about 1 cup water, brought to boil and simmered for about 10 mins, let cool to room temp, added to carboy just before aerating wort/pitching yeast.

Bought another vanilla bean at Wild by Nature grocery store, going to split, scrape, cut up, boil for 10 mins again and add to secondary fermenter, should have a nice vanilla aroma/flavor right??