This is probably the hardest question to answer, because the answer will necessarily be highly subjective and it will require many more tests: Which vodka makes the best Vanilla Extract?
There are well over 100 different brands of vodka available in the Unites States. Most retailers I’ve visited carry a wide variety of brands, each in a variety of sizes. It gets overwhelming. Luckily, the retailers have a fairly standardized practice of putting the cheapest brands on the bottom shelf, the intermediately-priced brands in the middle, and the highest-priced brands at eye-level. At the beginning of this quest, I had no idea that “top shelf” had a literal meaning.
As noted before, there are quite a number of sites that ultimately recommend you can use “the cheapest vodka you can find”, but even this source notes that “making the right vodka choice is essential”. My first bottle of Vanilla Extract used a 200 ml bottle of Smirnoff vodka as the base alcohol. I believe I paid $3.49. Over two years later, it is a great bottle of Vanilla Extract, even after being replenished two or three times. Replenishing will be addressed in a different post.
The Problem
There are some extremely cheap vodkas out there, and my friends who drink say they can be very, very bad. “Bad” for my buddies may not be “bad” for my Vanilla Extract, though. There are also some extremely expensive vodkas out there. On the Total Wine and More website, as of May, 2025, you can obtain a standard 750 ml bottle of Barton vodka for $5.99, or you can get Clix for $319.99. (BTW, am I the only non-drinker in the world who finds it weird that you have to be 21 to look at a website for alcohol?). That works out to a range of 24¢ to $12 per ounce.
If we put an arbitrary base range of $12 to $18 per bottle of vodka (50 to 75¢ per ounce), Total Wine stocks 19 varieties.
Method
Our proposal: Purchase as many 50 ml sample sizes as possible. Add 6 grams of vanilla bean pods to each bottle. Let it brew for a minimum of three months. At the end of three months, test the quality of each Vanilla Extract using the same method for each. We will probably create some specific recipe that is repeatable.
Preparation
In April, 2025, we purchased a dozen 50 ml bottles of various Vodkas. In June, two additional Vodkas were added to the group:
- Eight Degrees
- Absolut
- American Plains
- Big Machine
- Deep Eddy
- Ketel One
- New Amsterdam
- Platinum 7X
- Smirnoff
- Starr Blu
- Svedka
- Tito’s
- Tower
- Veil
Using the same package of Grade B vanilla bean pods, 6 gram portions were measured out, the pods split, cut into small pieces that would fit inside the bottles, and put them in a cabinet. Note that since this is such a small quantity, metric measures were utilized to ensure uniformity bottle-to-bottle.
The tests begin in July, 2025.
The Test
I’m still trying to determine a less subjective test to put these vanillas through. My first choice would be to make cookies, but we would end up with enough cookies to feed a Vacation Bible School, and imagine the stories that would end up at home that night … “Teacher asked us which vodka was our favorite!”
One test I’ve seen from Vanillapura (among others) is to put five drops of Vanilla Extract into a glass, pour in two tablespoons of milk, wait three to five minutes, and taste.
Another from Manion is to put a few drops of the Vanilla Extract on a sugar cube and sip the Vanilla Extract out. These folks charge $11 per ounce for their product, BTW.
Other suggestions are to make creme brûlée, or even pancakes.
One problem is that I don’t have very good taste … figuratively and literally. People will rave over something as the best ever, and to me, it tastes as good as the one I had last time. I don’t seem to be able to tell when something is extremely tasty rather than just ok tasty. Therefore, I have asked Micah Ewing over at AwaitingAcerage to help with this experiment. We will perform the same tests on the test bottles from our home kitchens and publish the results. I will pass the test set of bottles I created off to her and create another test set for my own use.
The first of these bottles were bottled on 10 April, 2025, so the experiments will begin sometime after 10 July. Micah and I are collaborating on making a test that will be objective and that we will be able to replicate.
Update
The Vanilla Wafer recipe from Sugar Spun Run will be used to make a batch of cookies. Two types of Vodka will be chosen to provide the Vanilla Extract, and the kind folks at the Nolensville Farmers’ Market will be asked to evaluate the two batches. The brands being tested will not be divulged prior to the test, and the results will be published the week after the test. An attempt will be made to ensure the results are as unbiased as possible.
Results
This post will be updated when the tests begin.
