Adding bourban and vanilla to porter.

I'm about ready to put the Austin Homebrew Supply vanilla porter into a keg. The recipes calls for adding the extract at the time of kegging or bottling. After reading the reviews on their site, a few people said that the vanilla extract that came with the kit made it taste "chemically." I have some vanilla bean paste, pretty close to actual beans and I want to add some bourbon.

What would be the best way to add the vanilla and bourbon? Should I just let the vanilla kind of steep in the bourbon for a while? Or boil it?

Has anyone brewed the AHS vanilla porter? How did it turn out for you?

I have not tried a vanilla bourbon porter, but on another forum there is a recipe for one that is very specific. The recipe highly recommends fresh beans. Two beans are plenty, split them with a knife and put them in the secondary for a week. The bourbon is added at bottling time.

At one point, I posted a link to another homebrew forum. They had a thread about a Vanilla Bourbon Porter . . .the thread is huge, and a lot of folks discuss this brew in detail.

For some reason, my posting was deleted . . . it must be bad karma to link to other homebrew forums around here. I will relocate that thread, but you may have to PM me to get the link as it may get deleted again.

Here is the link: http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?t=22693&highlight=vanilla

PM me if it gets deleted. Have fun reading 28 pages of posts about this beer.