Consider the vanilla bean. Pause. Bow slightly. The Aztecs did. Between inventing sprawling gods, mythic calendars, and words that end in atl like they’re clearing their throats at the end of time, they also cracked one of civilization’s great culinary riddles: how to coax flavor out of an orchid that absolutely does not want to cooperate. Vanilla is not some shrug-and-stir ingredient. It is the fruit of Vanilla planifolia, an orchid pod that demands months of curing and fermentation, plus the delicate absurdity of being pollinated by hand, flower by flower, like a botanical trust fall.
Mexico still carries the legacy, but Madagascar’s bourbon vanilla pods are the Chanel No. 5 of the species — lush, deep, aromatic, the sort of aroma that makes you close your eyes involuntarily and remember a dessert you once loved too much. This is vanilla as luxury, vanilla as patience rewarded, vanilla as the quiet flex behind the curtain.
In beer, vanilla has become the adjunct that doesn’t shout, doesn’t sparkle, doesn’t pose — it simply elevates. It turns gold into platinum, stout into velvet, porter into something you linger over longer than intended. It smooths edges, deepens shadows, and makes everything around it behave better.
Not wanting to waste a single sacred pod, we present Craft Beer Crosscut 11.3.17: A Flight of Vanilla Bean — a gentle, fragrant reminder that the most powerful flavors are often the ones that took the longest to arrive.
Puyallup River Imperial Eggnog Mud Mountain Milk Stout
8.5% ABV, 20 IBU
Puyallup River Brewing Mud Mountain Milk Stout grabbed a silver medal at the 2015 Washington Beers Awards. It grabbed a bronze at the 2016 Washington Beer Awards. It grabs every drinker when they taste its smooth as chocolate silk self. Fresh vanilla beans, cocoa nibs, oats, and six different specialty malts, including Chocolate malt, make this milk stout one of the easiest drinking dark beers on the planet. Add cinnamon, nutmeg and other holiday spices and you have Imperial Eggnog Mud Mountain Milk Stout, with creamy flavors of eggnog, spice, coffee, roasted nuts and chocolate. Ends smooth and creamy.
Black Raven Kitty Kat Blues
5.8% ABV, 35 IBU
From Redmond, comes this Black Raven Brewing unassuming pale ale that has the screws turned a bit with additions of dried blueberries, vanilla bean and organic mountain-grown catnip. The result is an easy drinking pale ale that finishes like this morning’s blueberry muffin with, of course, vanilla, dry bittering hops and heard catnip, which is similar to hops in taste — in fact they are a relative, but the flavor is very dry, medium bitterness, drying in the mouthfeel.
Hi-Fi Brewing Whiskey Vanilla Woofer Porter
6.9% ABV, 40 IBU
Hi-Fi Brewing rocks its Woofer Porter with Carafa II malt provides the roasty, almost coffee-like flavor, while a variety of caramel malts contribute sweetness. After the Redmond, Washington brewery infuses Woofer with liberal infusions of whiskey and vanilla post-fermentation the result is an aroma of vanilla bean, roast, wood and bourbon with flavor following suit with also chocolate and slight booze.
Ballast Point Victory At Sea
10% ABV
Victory at Sea’s story begins in 1992, when a homebrewer named Jack White, recognizing the dearth of good supply shops nearby with which to augment his hobby, opened Home Brew Mart near Mission Beach in San Diego. Another homebrewer, Yuseff Cherney, soon joined him, and together the two moved the brews they were making in their back yards to the back of the shop. In 1996, Ballast Point was born. Victory at Sea smells like breakfast — Aromas of cappuccino gelato and medium-roast coffee with milk meld with subtle background vanilla notes as well as bits of sourdough and brown sugar. In the flavor, Victory at Sea switches to dessert. Bitter medium-roast coffee flavors play at the sides of the tongue while chocolate, vanilla and caramel build at the front. Toast and molasses make appearances as well, and alcohol heat rolls down the throat, noticeable but not overpowering.
Stillwater On Fleek
13% ABV, 50 IBU
Vermont brewery Casita Cerveceria traveled to Baltimore, Maryland to brew this black as night imperial stout at Stillwater Artisanal. Oh, but it doesn’t smell like motor oil but instead coffee, burnt toast, dark chocolate and a little marshmallow, all woven between strong alcohol tones. We placed this delicious treat at the end of the flight as it warms complex licorice, bold earthy bitterness, chocolate, earthy vanilla, faint smoke and caramel fudge come forth. It finishes long with an intense and heavy mouthfeel — almost like a milkshake — slightly vinous for the style, with a smooth but firm alcohol warmth. There’s enough carbonation to push the beer along and make it dangerously, DANGEROUSLY drinkable for 13 percent.
