I make vanilla essence every year with good quality vodka. This year I used different (new) bottles – I sanitized them in the oven as usual. This year I see this stuff on the surface. It smells okay but I doubt I’ll use it unless there’s a harmless explanation for it. Can someone explain? TIA.
by niamiah2
8 Comments
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Pictures are of a bottle of vanilla essence, with murky growth at the top, in the bottle neck.
Can you share what recipe and process you used? It’s hard to help you when we don’t know what you did.
You should never sanitize glass in an oven. It can cause thermal shock and shatter and harm you or your oven. Also it doesn’t actually sterilize as dry heat is not reliable for sterilization
https://www.healthycanning.com/oven-sterilization
I’m a vanilla aficionado as well as a canner. I’ve used the same wide mouth quart jar for my steeping vanilla beans for a few years now. I don’t feel the need to sanitize it because the alcohol assures that nothing will grow.
I do use 8 oz (by weight) split vanilla beans to 24-30 oz (by volume) of alcohol, usually a golden or dark rum. I also put my fresh beans and alcohol in their jar in my sous vide circulator for a few hours at 108 F to jump start the extraction process. Temperatures over 120 F can damage the more delicate aromatics of vanilla. Then I put the jar in a warm, dark place for a year.
I’ve done Vanilla Extract for years in various jars and never had something like that on the top.
I don’t usually sterilize the jars since I use a high proof alcohol- I wash then but don’t do an actual sterilization. The alcohol usually prevents the need too.
Either your vanilla beans had some mold on them before they went in. (Rare but it happens).
Or you didn’t use a high enough proof alcohol and something grew in there.
Because it’s in the liquid it makes me think your alcohol was weak and it fermented into a vingear and you have some sort of growth in there. Mold grows on top of the liquid not in it as it needs oxygen.
This isnt really canning… its more of fermenting thing I think? I’m not sure what exactly extracts fall under…
You really shouldn’t use the oven to sanitize. Heat transfer can be unpredictable. Boiling works best. 10 minutes rolling boil. Add 1 minute per every 1000 feet extra above sea level. I’m at 1150ft so I do 11 minutes 🙂
I follow the “if in doubt throw it out” method. It’s strange to me anything would grow like that in alcohol. That being said though if it can grow in alcohol I don’t want to put it in my body. Google search quickly gave me a bunch of different dangerous fungus that like to grow in vodka. Most likely came off the vanilla beans.
TL;DR throw it out.
🤔why are you canning this? Doesn’t it preserves fine in alcohol? Room temp, you just open it and keep putting vanilla beans and more vodka??