How To Make Homeade Vanilla Extract

To make Vanilla extract we follow a simple recipe of 1oz of beans to 8oz of alcohol.

The alcohol needs to be 35-50% or 70-Proof to 100-Proof. If Higher than 50% the alcohol needs to be cut with distilled water to avoid burning the beans.

You can put the beans in whole, you can split them or you can even cut them up, the choice is yours. I personally keep mine whole as I like to use the caviar as needed in other recipes then return the pod to the bottle to keep extracting.

For double fold Vanilla use 2oz of beans for every 8oz of alcohol.

For triple fold Vanilla use 3oz of beans for every 8oz of alcohol.

Personally I make both Single and Double folds for the most part and use 3oz for a 750 ml bottle of vodka, rum, white rum or Everclear cut with distilled water.

Most Vanilla will be ready for use around 6 to 12 months… some may take up to 24 months depending on the alcohol used. You may find some ready earlier but you can only really tell by doing a taste test.

The easiest taste test is to use whipped cream and add a couple of drops onto a tablespoon of whipped cream and see if it tastes how you want it to.