How vanilla extract is made

Real vanilla extract is cured pods steeped in alcohol, and it contains hundreds of flavor compounds.

stations: 7
things upstream: 13
raw sources: 7
steps from the ground: 5

The short version

Vanilla extract is made from cured vanilla pods soaked and percolated in a mix of ethanol and water. In the United States, a product called pure vanilla extract must contain at least 35% alcohol and 100 grams of beans per litre. Pods get their flavor during a long curing process first, and the pollination is done by hand.

Pollinate each flower by hand

Vanilla orchids rarely set fruit on their own outside their home range, so workers pollinate each flower by hand. The technique that made commercial farming possible was found in 1841 by Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old on the island of Reunion.
Pick the green pods

Each flower makes one pod, and pods are picked by hand when ripe. The pods smell of almost nothing at this stage, because the flavor compound is locked in a sugar-bound form.
Kill the living tissue

Pods are scalded in hot water, frozen, scratched or heated in an oven, which stops the pod from growing and breaks open its cells. Enzymes then start turning glucovanillin into vanillin. Hot water treatment can be as short as 3 minutes at 63 to 65 °C.

Goes in
Water
Sweat them in blankets

Warm pods are wrapped in cloth and left to sweat so the enzymes keep working and the beans turn dark brown. This sweating stage is the first part of the cure.
Dry slowly and condition

Pods are dried over weeks, then stored in boxes so the aroma rounds out. The cure always has the same four parts, which are killing, sweating, slow drying and conditioning.
Steep in alcohol

Chopped pods are macerated and percolated in a solution of ethanol and water. The alcohol dissolves the vanillin and several hundred other flavor compounds.

Goes in
Vanilla pods Ethanol Water
Age, filter and bottle

The extract rests, is filtered, and is bottled. Double and triple strength extracts for factories use many times more beans per litre.

End of the lineVanilla extract Next it goes into ice cream, cola, white chocolate and 1 more.

Worth repeating

An estimated 95% of products sold as vanilla use vanillin made from lignin, not from vanilla pods.
Bourbon vanilla has nothing to do with whiskey. It is named for the Bourbon Islands, such as Reunion, ruled by France's Bourbon kings.
Mexico was the chief producer of vanilla until the middle of the 19th century.