vanilla beans in secondary

THinking of doing a Souther Tier Creme burlee stout is it ok to thro in the vanilla beans in the secondary without sanitizing? if not how to sanitize

I suppose you could dunk them in a starsan solution. But in secondary you already have a ton of yeast in suspension and not much in left for any bacteria to feast on. I say dunk um in and roll with it. I believe that people have boiled them in a small amount of water to create a sanitized solution of vanilla. I would imagine someone has a sanitization routine that would be helpful. I am curious myself.

You will probably be ok just splitting, scraping, chopping and tossing them in. However, some people recommend soaking them in a high ABV spirit. For my Bourbon Vanilla Porter I soaked the beans in Bourbon for a few hours, just to be safe. A more neutral spirit, such as Vodka, might be more appropriate in your case.

As always the choice is yours.

Don't worry about it. Wash your hands before handling the beans. Also, split the vanilla beans length wise to expose the seeds to the beer. This will help with the vanilla flavor. Use the freshest vanilla beans you can find. You should be able to smell them through the packaging!

I've put two whole vanilla beans in the secondary in a chocolate cherry stout and I really couldn't taste them. You could easily use four of them.

I would not put them in star San. And soaking them in alcohol would take a lot of the flavor away from them. Split them and add them to the secondary!

I soak mine in bourbon before adding to a vanilla stout - I do them whole to kill anything on the outside (assuming the inside of the closed bean is sanitary), then use sanitized utensils to cut/scrape the beans into the conditioning vessel. Bourbon has vanilla notes anyway, and if you shake them dry the .001oz of bourbon that gets into your beer will not affect the flavor at all.

This is all probably overkill, as you're throwing them into a hostile environment that's full of alcohol and unlikely to support much microbial life.

-edit- BTW - make sure to sip the bourbon afterwards. Very tasty.

If you are really worried, I would split, scrap, then chop up the pod. Place everything in a small, sanitized jar and put a shot of vodka on top and toss around. Let everything sit for a few minutes to let the alcohol do its job, then toss everything in the fermenter. You shouldn't be able to detect that small amount of vodka in the beer and you won't lose any of the vanilla flavor either. Heck, if anything that vodka will help bump your abv up a slight bit .

funkswing said:

And soaking them in alcohol would take a lot of the flavor away from them. Split them and add them to the secondary!

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I would just toss the Vodka in. A neutral spirit will not impart much flavor (homemade Vanilla extracts use Vodka or grain spirits), and will only add a negligible amount of ABV.

voltin said:

I would just toss the Vodka in. A neutral spirit will not impart much flavor (homemade Vanilla extracts use Vodka or grain spirits), and will only add a negligible amount of ABV.

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True dat, but it's not necessary. Especially in a beer that's 11% alcohol!