Vanilla beans

A couple of questions, why scrape the inside?
Also how should the whole beans be stored before scraping

Typically the inside is scrapped because those little seed looking things inside contain the vanilla flavor. They are the same black specs you see in French Vanilla ice cream. When I added vanilla beans to my beer, I just cut the beans and half soaked them in bourbon for a day and then tossed them in the secondary for a week. I got plenty of vanilla flavor without black specs in the beer.

I keep my beans in a zip lock bag in a cool dark spot. Keep in mind that the flavor and aroma my leach into whatever you are storing it with.

You can store them in your cupboard, inside their sealed containers. To extract the most flavor from the bean, split them open with a knife and scrape the interior seeds and soft flesh. Place everything into your wort either in the boil or as a dry hop (as your recipe demands).

The reason for it is that you'll have more vanilla flavor from more vanilla bean surface area coming into contact with the wort.

Thanks for the input,

I kinda of went a bit crazy today

12.0 LB Weyermann PA
1. LB Chocolate Grain
10 oz Black Patent
.5 Carafa II
mash @ 154 for 60.
pre boil threw in a German milk chocolate about 8 oz and 6 oz Hersey's Bakers' Cocoa.

2 OZ saaz 60.
1 OZ MT hood flame out with 3 vanilla beans

2L starter 1028
and I took out the Vanilla beans and as much as the trube as possible and got 1.081. either I am getting better at this or I had too many beers.
efficiency should be 80% with those numbers.
Ill put it in the secondary in a few weeks taste it and decide if I am going to add Vanilla beans to the secondary or add bourbon soak beans either way I enjoyed having fun with this beer so far.

There are some dos and don'ts when using vanilla beans.

Heat is an enemy of the complex flavor profile of real vanilla so I do not recommend adding them to the boil. Plus water is not a good extraction vehicle for vanilla, however alcohol is. Add the cut up beans when the wort has cooled and let the developing alcohol do the work.

My opinion is that you do not need to scrape out the seeds and pulp. Just cut the beans into 1/2 inch pieces.

Store the unused beans at room temperature in an air tight glass bottle for up to 2 years.

Commercial breweries that use our beans add them in late in the process after the alcohol has developed.

You can also make your own extract using vodka as the extraction medium. Put 7-9 cut up beans in 8 oz of vodka.

Three 8 inch beans are about equivalent to 3 tablespoons of 1x extract.

Order your beans from Boston Vanilla Bean Company (google us) and use the coupon code of homebrewtalk to get a 10% discount on your order.

Enjoy! Real vanilla is fantastic!