Making Vanilla Extract

Well here it is, I took the afternoon off from working on the trailer mating to bring you today's "Whats on the table?".
Vanilla Extract (I just can't justify spending $10 for a tiny bottle of vanilla extract that I use quickly)

What you need: (this isn't rocket science or at least I certainly hope not)

Vodka, cheap
I also chose to try some rum too since I had it sitting around.  If you plan on making smaller bottles 1 big bottle of vodka would be fine.
I used 1, 1.75 liter bottle of vodka and about 3 cups of rum.  Give or take, I don't measure!

Vanilla Beans
I ordered mine from www.beanilla.com because I couldn't find any locally, but you can order them from Amazon and sometimes find them in grocery stores or at cosco.  I used 10 tahitian vanilla beans.

Bottles
Glass preferable with a tight fitting lid.  I reused a vanilla bottle, the vodka bottle, the rum bottle and a wild vines bottle.  You can buy nice fancy new bottles, but hey, I am going for economical.
 
Patience
You have to wait 8 weeks.

I read several blogs and this months Martha Stewart and just kind of combined recipes and ideas.

Slice your beans lengthwise to help release the flavor, then I added roughly 1 bean per 1.5 cups of alcohol.  Basically I poured some of the vodka from the big bottle into the wild vines bottle and some of the rum into the vanilla bottle.  The Vodka and Wine bottle got 4 beans each and the rum bottle with about 1.5 c. of rum and the vanilla bottle each got one bean.

Label your bottles. I tried to remove the old labels but that was way to tedious so I just wrote on some sticky notes and placed them on the bottles.  Note the writing utensil was crayon...lol...

Store in a cool dark place for 8 weeks. Then poof. Vanilla extract.  Once the beans are softened you can leave the beans in and gradually add more vodka to the bottle to replace what you use until you notice the vanilla flavor is not so flavorful anymore.  Then its time to do the process again with new beans.

Now a couple more tips, there are many different kinds of vanilla beans, this is my first try and I chose the tahitian because quite frankly they were on sale. You may want to experiment with alcohols and beans.  We would love to hear how your experiment goes. Our facebook page.

~Christine~