vanilla bean....bottling bucket or secondary?

When is the better time to add the vanilla? Bottling time like zest or secondary like fruit.

I do both... Once in secondary and then again to taste in the bottling bucket.

I just finished my vanilla porter and did it in the secondary. It has great flavor and aroma. I think it will depend on what you are looking for. If you want a lot of vanilla presence, I would do both, if you just want soft notes of vanilla, maybe just botting bucket. I did not add any to the bucket and it still came out great.

I did a vanilla porter similar to the Dry Dock Urca Vanilla Porter kit on Norther Brewers site. I never use a secondary, so I first scraped out the beans onto a sanitized plate and also cut up the skins and put it all into the primary with 7 days left before keg(bottle). The original recipe calls for 5 beans and I only used 4, but it came out with plenty of flavor and aroma. My wife likes my version even better than the original so I think it worked

Put it in secondary, If using real beans, make sure to remove the husks. Leave 7 days and taste for vanilla presence, if not enough leave 3 more days, taste again.

Thanx guys! I think secondary is the way to go!

dbhokie said:

Put it in secondary, If using real beans, make sure to remove the husks. Leave 7 days and taste for vanilla presence, if not enough leave 3 more days, taste again.

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Remove the Husks??? Why? Just drop them in Bourbon or Vodka for a day or two to kill the Bacteria and pour it all into the beer. The Husks have have a ton of vanilla essence. Do what dstauth said "cut and scrape" put it all into your beer.

JoeBronco said:

Remove the Husks??? Why? Just drop them in Bourbon or Vodka for a day or two to kill the Bacteria and pour it all into the beer. The Husks have have a ton of vanilla essence. Do what dstauth said "cut and scrape" put it all into your beer.

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Semantics. By husk I was referring to the pod, the outer shell of the bean whatever you may tEchnically call it, then scrape it. Just what my mom always called them when cooking. They are bitter.