Vanilla Beans in Cognac for brewing

I have read in many posts about splitting vanilla beans, cutting them in either 1" or 2" pieces and adding them to vodka so that it can extract the vanilla flavor. I have also read that you can pretty much use any kind of hard liquor to do this. Well, I just dipped mine into a shot of cognac (not the cheap stuff either). I'm thinking of adding the whole shot with the beans to a stout when I put it into a secondary. Anyone ever try to experiment with vanilla beans in cognac before? I'm curious to see if I should even attempt it.

Never did it with cognac, which by the way a cognac stout sounds amazing, but I did it with whiskey for a whiskey stout and it came out great.


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I think you'll be pretty happy with the result. Sounds awesome.

Okay. I guess I'll find out if I hit it out of the park or struck out in a couple of weeks. I used three vanilla beans. I'm hopping it's not too much. Will post the outcome.

Unless you are adding a decent amount of the liquor to the beer (of the order of half a bottle or more to a batch), it probably makes no difference what liquor you use.

Calder said:

Unless you are adding a decent amount of the liquor to the beer (of the order of half a bottle or more to a batch), it probably makes no difference what liquor you use.

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WOW! That's really all I can say about this.
The amount of cognac that I used was about three shots worth. I also used three vanilla beans split down the middle and cut into one inch pieces. They sat in the cognac for about a week before adding the whole thing to the brew. I then let it sit another week before kegging it. It came out way better than expected. The stout is amazing on its own, but even better with the hint of the cognac and vanilla in the back. Will be doing this one again!