Bill The Flavor Guy shows you how to prepare an alcohol-free and sugar-free vanilla extract. Although it doesn’t contain any alcohol, everything else is true to form. It’s a very simple formula; vanilla beans and glycerin.
That’s it.
First use a food processor to grind your vanilla beans up as small as you can for a great-tasting vanilla extract. Once they’re done, set them aside.
In the video, he used grade A vanilla beans. They’re not necessarily for extraction if you’re doing this on a commercial level, you probably wouldn’t use this kind of beans. At Nature’s Flavors, we do even though a lot of other companies don’t.
After processing, you’ll be left with some beans and powder. You can leave the powder since they’re shredded pretty good. Later, you can take some of the powder and put it in a cup of coffee or tea. Drop them right in there and steep with your tea. It will make your black tea taste like the most amazing vanilla black tea you’ve ever had!
Slide the beans and powder into an air-tight container. Mason jars are perfect! Fill the jar with glycerin. The Flavor Guy uses Organic Glycerin and fills the whole jar with this ingredient. It’s always a good idea to have a bit of extra glycerin laying around.
Seal the jar and let the flavors disperse to get all the air bubbles. Some air bubbles will disperse immediately, the rest might take a couple of days.
Over the next couple of days watch over your extract. You’ll be able to see the color change from clear to tan, like a traditional vanilla extract. The longer you let it sit, the more tan the color, and the more the vanilla flavor are going to get out. The longer you wait the better it gets, right?
For the best results, let the extract sit in a dry cool place for two months. Be sure to shake the jar every week.
Since there isn’t any alcohol in there, it’s going to extract a lot slower. But it’s still fun, alcohol-free, and can last you a few years.
And if you don’t feel like going through the hassle, we have this product already available!
