Vanilla extract to bean ratio

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snyklez

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Morning everyone! Quick question that I can't seem to find an answer for on the site or the googles. I'm brewing a Bad Santa this Sunday which calls for one vanilla bean. I'd rather use pure extract as I have it on hand and I've heard bean oils can impact head retention. So...anyone know a conversion from bean to extract? I'm thinking just 2 tsp, but wanted to see if anyone out there knows for sure.
 
Anyone substituted vanilla extract for a bean? How much did you use?
 
In the Vanilla porter recipe that is big here (don't have a link at the moment) it calls for two beans cut length wise. I used 1 oz of pure extract. A brew mate used beans and they were almost spot on. The beans were ever so slightly stronger.
 
There's just not enough oil in the bean to affect your head retention, and when you soak vanilla beans in alcohol to make extract you're dissolving the oil in the extract as well (that's where the vanilla flavor is), but I would add your extract at bottling. Pull a sample of a known volume and add vanilla dropwise until you have the flavor you want. Then scale up appropriately.
 
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