Vanilla Beans for Beer and Brewing

Vanilla has started to make its way around the world of craft brewing and distilling, into the hallowed halls of the masters, and into just about every spirit, beer, and cup of cheer worldwide. The most typical place to find it is nestled deep in the hearty undertones of stouts, darker ales, and porters…but some of the more recent interesting experimentations are happening with white ales, saisons, and even wheat and IPAs.

Madagascar Vanilla in Beer / Vanilla Beer in Madagascar

MVC has supplied brewers and wizards of the craft in America since the birth of the craft renaissance era (not very long ago!) in the USA and the Sam Adams Brew Master competition (proudly supplying the winner of the award!!!) and has in 2020 started supplying Red Island Brewing (the fledgling finest (or only) craft beer in Madagascar) to produce limited seasonal runs of vanilla ale in Earth’s Most Unique island itself!

Using Vaniila in Beer:
*courtesy of grandpa google and many excellent breweries

To brew with beans, you can split, snip, cut up, or perforate up to 5 beans per keg (or creep into super vanillafied territory with 6-10 beans) to make a very vanilla note, that serves as an undertone to the batch and staples down its aroma on your palette. Usually, lots of other flavors are put in with the vanilla, while there are surprisingly few pure vanilla-flavored brews.

http://learn.kegerator.com/brewing-vanilla-porter/
https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/use-of-vanilla-beans.61971/
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=26550
https://www.greatamericanbeerfestival.com
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/vessi-beer-fermentor-and-dispenser–4

They say as a folktale, maybe terrifically true, that New Coke was illustriously introduced by the Coca Cola Corporation, to obfuscate or at worst or compensate at best for a lack of substance in spice – a supply chain crisis of their Madagascar Vanilla. As their extracts went down a few folds, the prices had gone yet 6 to 8 fold higher, the year before New Coke was introduced…

The timeline and price behavior does track this annual cycle and market release very well to suggest as such, and thus consumers when they rejected it unknowingly voted vanilla back as a centerpiece of the secret Coca Cola “classic” recipe.

Today Henri Fraise and Sons in Madagascar own about 1% stake of all of Coke, rumor has it acquiring this ever-lucrative equity golden goose in exchange for stable bean splits supply, which formulates the “classic” recipe for Coke’s golden goose, after a hard landing…and hard lesson.

So maybe truth is sweeter than legend!

MVC loves brewers, brewmasters, and distillers! – If you want to partner up and make some great lines of beer or spirits, we are very happy to work with you as a long term, contract, and discount basis to help you make the perfect repeatable recipe you can carry long into the future!

For Brewers and Distillers, MVC is flexible and can fulfill smaller quantity, regular, or custom orders. We love to help out, and can sculpt a micro to macro supply to be just what and how much you need and of the right flavor profile. Ask Us!

Beer in Madagascar – Try it on tap in town or in the taverns of Tana or SAVA!