Lil' Sparky
Cowboys EAC
Hey guys,
I'm making a vanilla porter. I transferred the beer to the secondary yesterday (tasted great ) and I added a vanilla bean. I followed the advice from the guy at the HBS and what I'd seen here. I slit the bean, scraped the black stuff on the inside, chopped the bean and made a strong tea by boiling it all in ~ 1/4 cup of water. I added that to the secondary and then racked the beer on top of it.
For those of you who have done this before, I've got a few questions. All the stuff from the vanilla bean just seems to just be floating on top of the beer (yeah I know - it's oil). I assume this is normal. Did you swirl the secondary occasionally to get it to mix? How did you make sure none of the bean solids got into the bottles - did you try to filter it somehow, or does it eventually fall to the bottom with the rest of the trub or get left behind when you rack to your bottling bucket?
I'm not sweating it - this beer's going to be great. I tried the same recipe someone else had made a few months ago. I was just wondering if I need to do anything out of the ordinary with the bean since this was the first time I've tried one.
Thanks and Cheers!
I'm making a vanilla porter. I transferred the beer to the secondary yesterday (tasted great ) and I added a vanilla bean. I followed the advice from the guy at the HBS and what I'd seen here. I slit the bean, scraped the black stuff on the inside, chopped the bean and made a strong tea by boiling it all in ~ 1/4 cup of water. I added that to the secondary and then racked the beer on top of it.
For those of you who have done this before, I've got a few questions. All the stuff from the vanilla bean just seems to just be floating on top of the beer (yeah I know - it's oil). I assume this is normal. Did you swirl the secondary occasionally to get it to mix? How did you make sure none of the bean solids got into the bottles - did you try to filter it somehow, or does it eventually fall to the bottom with the rest of the trub or get left behind when you rack to your bottling bucket?
I'm not sweating it - this beer's going to be great. I tried the same recipe someone else had made a few months ago. I was just wondering if I need to do anything out of the ordinary with the bean since this was the first time I've tried one.
Thanks and Cheers!