We're Making Homemade Vanilla Extract — And It's Going to Take a Year (That's the Point)

Most people don't realize how simple it is to make real vanilla extract at home. You need two things: vanilla beans and alcohol. That's it. No preservatives, no artificial flavor, no mystery ingredients. Just beans, rum, time, and a little patience — which honestly is the hardest part.

Tytus and I kicked this whole thing off together, and I'm documenting it from the very beginning so you can follow along and do it yourself. We're going the long route — letting it sit for a full year — because the longer it goes, the deeper and richer the flavor gets. You can do three months or six months and have something good. But give it a year and you'll have something great.

Why Rum? And Which One?

You can use vodka, bourbon, or brandy to make vanilla extract — but we went with rum, and for good reason. Rum has its own natural sweetness and depth that plays really well with vanilla. We actually used three different kinds to see what each one brings to the finished extract.

We used Siesta Key Rum out of Florida — the silver (clear) rum and the spiced rum, both 80 proof. I've been to the Siesta Key distillery years ago and it's a great operation, so I already knew the quality was there. Then at the end we threw in one more bottle using their toasted coconut rum just to try a completely different spin on it. Three bottles, three flavor profiles, one year of waiting.

My gut says the spiced rum is going to make the most intense vanilla extract of the three. Something about spiced rum plus a full year of vanilla beans just sounds like it's going to be on another level. We'll find out.

The Formula — What Makes It Legally "Real" Vanilla Extract

This part matters if you're making it as a gift or just want to know you're doing it right. The U.S. legal standard for vanilla extract requires a minimum of 100 grams of vanilla beans per liter of alcohol, and the alcohol has to be at least 35% (70 proof or higher).

Our formula:
We used 750ml bottles (about 75% of a liter), so we scaled down proportionally — 75 grams of vanilla beans per bottle. That worked out to roughly 20 beans per bottle with the grade B Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans we used. At that weight, you're right at the legal threshold for real vanilla extract. No shortcuts.

💡 Grade B vs. Grade A beans: Grade A vanilla beans are the prettier ones — plump, moist, great for cooking where you want that visual pop of vanilla seeds. Grade B beans are drier and less photogenic, but they actually have a higher vanillin concentration, which makes them better suited for making extract. That's what we used.

What You'll Need to Get Started

🛒 Ingredients & Supplies

750ml bottle of rum, 80 proof or higher (we used Siesta Key silver, spiced, and toasted coconut)
75 grams of Grade B vanilla beans per bottle (we used Madagascar Bourbon)
Kitchen scale (to weigh the beans accurately)
Sharp knife and cutting board
A hard plastic straw or chopstick (for guiding beans into the bottle)
A dark, cool place to store the bottles while they age

How We Did It — Step by Step

Weigh out your beans. Use a kitchen scale and measure 75 grams per 750ml bottle. Don't eyeball this — weight is how you hit the right ratio. For us it came out to about 20 beans per bottle.
Split each bean down the center. Hold the top of the bean and run your knife through the middle lengthwise. You don't have to start perfectly from the very tip — just get it open so the seeds and paste can release into the rum. This is where all the flavor lives. Tytus handled a good portion of this step and did a great job.
Pour off a little rum before loading the beans. About an eighth to a quarter cup out of each bottle — just enough to make room so it doesn't overflow when you start stuffing beans in.
Load the beans into the bottle. Drop them in one at a time. If the beans are long enough to go in whole without cutting, keep them whole — it looks better and works just as well. Use a hard plastic straw to push them down and get them fully submerged.
Seal it and put it away. Cap the bottle, give it a gentle shake, and store it somewhere dark and cool. A cabinet works fine. Now the hard part — waiting.
Shake it every week or two. You don't have to do much, but a regular shake helps circulate the rum over the beans and keeps the extraction moving.

What Happens Next

Right when we loaded those beans and sealed the bottles, you could already see the vanilla specks shooting off into the rum. The extraction starts immediately. But what happens over the next several months is the difference between something decent and something you're genuinely proud to put your name on.

The rum pulls the vanillin and all the aromatic compounds out of those beans slowly, over time. The color deepens from clear to amber to a deep, dark brown. The smell goes from "rum with a hint of vanilla" to full, round, complex vanilla extract that smells better than anything you'll find in a grocery store bottle.

Our plan is to bottle these up as gifts — vanilla extract, maybe some spiced vanilla extract, and we're also looking at doing some vanilla sugar and spicy coated pecans to package alongside them for Christmas. When you make something this far ahead with this much intention behind it, that's a gift that carries weight.

Tytus is going to remember this project. We talked about the cookies mom makes, the muffins, daddy's pancakes, the waffles — and I told him this vanilla is going to go into all of those. There's something about that conversation in the kitchen, working alongside your kid, that you just don't get from buying a bottle at the store.

Check back in a year. We'll show you exactly how it turned out.

— Tyrone & Tytus

🍶 Ready to start your own batch? Drop a comment below — I'd love to know what spirit you're planning to use. And when you're ready to see how ours turned out after a full year, check out the follow-up post.

→ See the One Year Later Results | → Kitchen Best Buys | → YouTube Channel

Making Vanilla Extract