Are you making common mistakes in storing vanilla extract (commercial and homemade)?

Just a quickie post today. Tomorrow's post (Thursday's) has the info on getting free vanilla beans, buying them inexpensively and a giveaway.

So, in the comments on Monday's post, there was a question and small discussion on how to store vanilla extract, to ensure it maintains maximum strength. We often just keep our baking supplies in a cabinet that's convenient to our work, without regard to suitability to the product. And once we put that product away in the cupboard, it's easy to forget that we paid for that!

With extracts, I think this is important information, to ensure we are really getting value from what we purchase. If our vanilla extract loses strength, we're more inclined to double up on measure, which means our vanilla extract, whether we made it ourselves or bought it at the store, is actually costing us twice what we thought we paid for it. Ouch!

Getting maximum value from your vanilla extract

First of all, if you're purchasing pure vanilla extract, make sure you are purchasing from a store with a fast turnover of stock. The last thing you want is a product that was manufactured several years ago. This sounds obvious, right? I've been in stores where there was a thin layer of dust on top of some packages and cartons. Not a good omen for the manufacture date of the product.

The enemies of extracts are light, air and heat. Exposure to these three cause vanilla extract to age prematurely, experience flavor changes, evaporate and lose potency.

With vanilla extract in particular:

• if the vanilla is in a large bottle (more than you will use within a 3 month period, transfer some of the contents to a small bottle, for kitchen use, and refill as needed. This prevents the constant re-opening of the bottle. According the joyofbaking.com, the flavor of extracts does evaporate. Keep the bottle tightly sealed shut.
• if the bottle is clear, transfer the contents to a dark bottle (I re-use an old, dark-colored vanilla extract bottle), to reduce exposure to damaging light. However, if you have to choose between a dark bottle with poor fitting cap and a clear bottle that can be well-sealed after each use, go for the clear bottle. Exposure to light isn't nearly as harmful as exposure to air. Keeping the cupboard door shut most of the time can give the extract a lot of the darkness it needs.
• store vanilla extract in a cool and dark cupboard, but NOT in the fridge. And remember, the main-supply bottle doesn't "have" to be stored in the kitchen. I actually store my main supply on a shelf, in a closet in one of the coolest bedrooms, and use this to refill my tiny kitchen-use bottle.
• if storing in the cupboard above the counter, make sure this is not over a light system (I have under-cabinet lighting, which really heats up the enclosed space above the lights).

Even stored under ideal circumstances, vanilla extract will lose potency after a couple of years. It would be better to split a large bottle with a friend, and make or buy it more often, than keep a 5-year old bottle of vanilla on your shelves.

Happy baking!


Just an unrelated FYI -- there are feed delivery issues, regarding my posts. Since I changed from a .blogspot.com to simply a .com, my posts have not been showing up in feeds/blogrolls, or showing up hours to a day late. The email subscription appears to be working fine, however. (I have an email subscription to my own blog, so I can see if it is in fact being delivered.)

My resident tech geek is busy for the week, and I'm working all day on Saturday, so I may not be able to try anything to remedy this feed problem for a while. I'm sorry about that. In the meantime, if it matters to you to receive every post of mine, you could always sign up for email delivery. Or just check back often. I do have a post planned for tomorrow, then again on Monday, and my usual posting time is 4 AM PDT, if knowing part of my schedule helps.

I hope your week is going splendidly!