Vanilla Stout?

[Shayler]

Going to make a vanilla stout sometime soon, just going to use a kit and add vanilla pods to it, got plenty of vanilla pods found a pack of 15 in the back of the cupboard.
Question is how many vanilla pods to add and should I put them in whole or cut them up a bit?

 

[oz11]

There's more than one way to do it and you're probably get a few suggestions, so here's mine: :)


Chop up a couple of beans and soak in vodka or whisky for a few days, strain the lumps out and add the liquid to the fermentor towards the end of fermentation. If you like stronger vanilla flavour go for more beans/longer soaking period.

 

[Laurin]

This is not necessarily only for brewing beer, but you can make your own vanilla sugar if you just cut open a pod in a few pieces and mix it with sugar and let it sit in jar for a few weeks. You could use the sugar for making beer. If you want to have a stronger flavour putting it in some spirit is a good idea. Make sure you get all the little "beads" out to get all the goodness from the vanilla.

 

[alanywiseman.]

I was thinking about using vanilla sugar in a beer soon and had the idea of trying to create vanilla spraymalt. This would give a better flavour and mouth feel compared to sugar.