About a year ago, Tytus and I made our first batch of homemade vanilla extract. We used Siesta Key silver rum — the clear one — along with a little spiced rum and some toasted coconut rum, poured it all over vanilla beans, sealed the jars, and let time do the work. Then we basically just... waited.
Fast forward almost a year, and I pulled those jars out to show you what happened. If you haven't seen dark vanilla extract before, you're in for something. That clear rum we started with? Deep, rich brown. Almost like molasses. You can see the vanilla specs still floating in it and the beans right there through the glass. That's when you know you did something right.
We bottled it all up as Christmas gifts — and this video is us doing exactly that, with Tytus helping every step of the way, a year older and still just as much my kitchen partner.
Why We Chose Clear Bottles
We ordered 4-ounce clear glass bottles from Amazon. I could have gone with amber ones — that's what you typically see at the grocery store — but I specifically wanted clear. The whole point of making your own vanilla extract is that you know exactly what went into it, and you can see it. When you hand someone a gift and they can look right through the bottle and see how dark and rich that extract is, it tells the whole story without you saying a word.
We also added a split vanilla bean directly into each bottle before sealing. That does two things: it keeps the flavor developing even after you've poured it off, and it looks beautiful. A dark extract with a whole vanilla bean curled up inside — that's a gift people don't throw away.
What We Used to Bottle It
🛒 Supplies for Bottling
- 4 oz. clear glass bottles (ordered from Amazon)
- OXO fine mesh strainer
- Funnel
- Mixing bowl
- Split vanilla beans (2 per bottle)
- Chopsticks (cheap ones — great for guiding beans into narrow bottles)
- "Homemade with Love" labels (also from Amazon)
- Paper towel to dry bottles before labeling
How We Bottled It — Step by Step
- Strain the extract. Pour the aged extract through a fine mesh strainer into a clean bowl. This catches all the bean pods and any sediment that settled at the bottom over the year. You'll see the beans start coming right out — that strainer earns its keep.
- Add two split beans to each empty bottle. Fold them over and drop them in. If the neck of the bottle is narrow, cheap chopsticks work perfectly for guiding the beans down without making a mess.
- Pour the strained extract in through a funnel. Fill each bottle to about the shoulder — leave a little headroom at the top. Inside the bottle you'll see all that vanilla paste and seeds that transferred during the pour. That's flavor.
- Cap and dry each bottle thoroughly. Wipe the outside down with a paper towel before applying your label. Any moisture on the glass and that sticker won't hold — especially if the bottle is going into someone's kitchen where it might get wet.
- Label and mark the batch. We used "Homemade with Love" labels and hand-wrote the year and batch number. This was Batch #1, Vanilla Extract, one year aged. Marking it matters — especially if you've got more batches going at different stages.
What to Do With the Leftover Beans
Don't throw those strained-out beans away. This is one of my favorite tips and I mention it in the video because most people just toss them — and that's leaving real flavor on the table.
The Best Part: Tytus
What I didn't expect when we started this project a year ago was how much Tytus would take ownership of it. He helped make the original batch, he remembered it, and here he is a year later helping bottle and label the finished product. There's something about handing your kid a jar of something they helped make — and watching them understand that good things take time — that's worth more than the extract itself.
These went out as Christmas gifts alongside some of the vanilla sugar we made from the leftover beans. The people who received them knew we made it from scratch and let it age for a year. That's the kind of gift that actually means something.
If you've been thinking about starting your own batch, the original video walks you through everything — the beans, the rum choices, the formula, all of it. And if you're starting now, you'll have something ready to give next Christmas. Start earlier than you think you need to. Time is the main ingredient.
📽 Watch: How We Made the Original Batch
— Tyrone & Tytus
→ Watch: How We Made the Original Batch | → Kitchen Best Buys | → YouTube Channel
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