New Vanilla

A long time ago (we used to be friends) I bought a vanilla infusion kit. I had seen vanilla made with bourbon, and I loves me my whiskey, so I decided to make vanilla using bourbon. I bought some Knob Creek and added it to the bottle with a couple of split vanilla beans on September 4th, 2008. I put the bottle in the cabinet, and it has been sitting there ever since. As you can see in the photo the liquid didn't turn black. It smells slightly like vanilla. I really expected more vanilla flavor after two years. I started using the vanilla a couple of weeks ago, and it gave the butter cookies I made a little something extra. A mellow bourbon flavor.
I've also made vanilla sugar using vanilla beans and regular sugar. We were running out of vanilla sugar, so I decided to buy new beans. When I found the beans I also found some vanilla paste. The vanilla paste is awesome. It is like a thick vanilla speck syrup. You get the vanilla flavor and the nice little specks. So far it makes great steamed vanilla milk and vanilla cappuccinos.