Vanilla Porter

I ordered AHB's Vanilla Porter ( http://www.austinhomebrew.com/produ...d=302&osCsid=7d36eea364c064d2f1fbbb87ba893b9f ) and according to their website, it contains vanilla extract. I'd imagine that the extract would leave a fairly harsh flavor. Would it be better to split a vanilla bean, scrape it, and steep that with the wort, and then either take it out or leave it in when it goes into the carboy to ferment? Maybe I'm just overanalyzing it, and my culinary experience is getting in the way. What do you think?

Your culinary exp is getting in the way

Actually brew the kit as is, especially if you're new to brewing...It's been formulated for the ingredients in the kit...If it tasted harsh, or like crap, Forrest at AHS wouldn't be selling it.

You have enough to worry/learn in terms of your brewing process to jump in an mess with kits..They're fool proof...that way if something goes wrong, you can isolate it in your process (sanitization, mixing wort and top off water, bottling, etc,) monkeying with a recipe adds too many other variables...

Read this thread...It's great new brewer advice...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=54362

When you got a few batches under your belt, then you can put your culinary experience into play.

Bobby_M said:

No matter how cool you think it is to modify, augment, or completely screw around with a recipe or kit, resist the urge to do so for your first 10 batches. Prove to yourself that you can make someone else's good beer before you try to make your own from scratch.

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Me and my overanalyzing. It's true. I've just found that when I'm cooking, if you have the choice to steep a vanilla pod instead of adding vanilla extract, the flavor's going to be 10x more complex and pleasant than with just extract.

Thanks.

One of my LHBSs has a Vanilla Porter recipe (link) that uses a whole vanilla bean split and scraped. Loved the beer, but did not detect any vanilla in the flavor. I plan to convert the recipe to AG, leave out the vanilla, and save a little scratch. Just my .02...

Laurel said:

Me and my overanalyzing. It's true. I've just found that when I'm cooking, if you have the choice to steep a vanilla pod instead of adding vanilla extract, the flavor's going to be 10x more complex and pleasant than with just extract.

Thanks.

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I know, I'm an accompolished cook & love to improvise too, but I know in the beginning, before I got a handle on what ingredients was what and how they were used and how they effected/influenced the other ingredients, I had to follow the recipe in the cookbooks for awhile...Once I had mastered the fundamentals of cooking then I could wing it....You're back in the beginning stages with brewing....everything you do, and when/how you do it will influence the final product... I don't agree with the guy who said don't mess around until you've done 10 batches...but you're first couple should follow the recipes...

Also playing around with brewing software helps get a handle on how ingredients effects the body, bitterness, color and alchohol content of beers....You don't have to buy any right away..there's 2 excellent free online recipe calculaters that I use.

http://beercalculus.com/recipe

http://tastybrew.com/calculators/recipe.html

You do have one up on a lot of brewers....you know how to cook AND you know THAT ingredients affect food in different ways depending on how their used...a lot of brewers may not know their way around a kitchen unless it involves wort making...So you just need to know about beer making ingredients and beer fundamentals...

The trick with kits is that, the various ingredients like the hops bill were formulated to take in consideration the characteristics of the other ingredients...So changing one...even the type of vanilla you use will have an effect on the others...

also you'll have to deal with how you want to sanitize the pod...most people who use vanilla beans soak em in bourbon for several days and add that to the beer, usually in secondary...

Revvy said:

also you'll have to deal with how you want to sanitize the pod...most people who use vanilla beans soak em in bourbon for several days and add that to the beer, usually in secondary...

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So people don't even boil the vanilla with the wort for 5 minutes? Interesting. It's good to know, that's what I would have done. I'll stick with the extract kit for now, I don't even know if I'll enjoy the port, If it's something I like, then I'll take it from there.

Okay, so I finally opened the box tonight. It turns out that the vanilla flavoring is a white powder. This goes against every thing I've learned from cooking as far as getting the best flavors from whole, natural ingredients, but I'll follow the directions and put it in. :-/