Vanil A Bean · Bourbon Series
A year in the making. Ready in a spoon. Bourbon Vanilla Bean Paste, alcohol-free and double fold, from Papua, Indonesia
Grown. Cured. Ground whole. Infused.
Double-fold Bourbon Paste · Papuafrom $39.95
01 · Papua, Indonesia
It begins as an orchid.
Vanilla is the fruit of an orchid, grown for us by smallholder farmers in the volcanic soils of Papua, Indonesia.
Then nine months on the vine.
The pod ripens slowly, filling with the tiny seeds that will one day flavour your kitchen.
Picked green, by hand.
Hand-selected when ripe, and every farmer paid fairly. At this stage it barely smells of vanilla: a green pod holds almost no free vanillin.
02 · The Bourbon cure
This is the slow part.
Ten to twelve weeks of curing and drying, none of it rushed. It is where the flavour is made: the pod’s own enzymes set its vanillin free, and hundreds of other notes develop with it.
Sweated overnight.
Each night the beans rest in teakwood barrels, a step of our own, where they sweat, darken and grow fragrant.
Sun by day.
Out into the sun for six to eight weeks, until the pod is supple and deep brown, and only 30 to 35 per cent of it is water.
Sorted. Then graded.
Every bean is sorted by hand and graded by our quality team. Grade A and Grade B beans go on to become this paste.
03 · One bean
Most vanilla stops here.
This is the bean other kitchens split, scrape and steep. We take it further, so a spoon does all three for you.
04 · From bean to paste
A final drying.
Dried once more, until only a fifth to a quarter of it is water: just dry enough to grind finely.
Frozen, tip to tip.
The whole pod is frozen in liquid nitrogen, ready to be milled.
Ground whole.
Seeds and shell stay together. Nothing is scraped out, nothing left behind. Every speck in the paste began here.
Into six months of extraction.
The ground bean is folded into our own vanilla extraction, drawn from whole beans over six months, cold, in organic vegetable glycerin and water. No alcohol. No heat.
Cured, then bottled.
A little organic guar gum keeps every seed suspended. Then the paste is left to cure for three months before it is bottled, until bean and extraction taste as one.
05 · The paste
Lift the cap.
Vanilla twice over: whole beans ground into the paste, and the flavour of more beans drawn into the extraction around them.
The ground bean brings the depth.
Rich, sweet chocolate. Earthy dried berries. Soft caramel. The taste of a properly cured Bourbon bean.
The extraction carries it.
Glycerin holds vanilla’s flavour without alcohol, so nothing cooks off. It stays in the bake, and helps keep it moist. No sugar is added.
The seeds show it.
Black specks through every spoonful: the mark of real vanilla, seen before it is tasted.
Double fold.
Two kilos of beans to every ten litres: twice the beans of a single-fold extraction. Use half the vanilla extract a recipe asks for, or 1½ teaspoons for each vanilla bean.
07 · Bean or paste?
Bean
- Split.
- Scrape.
- Steep.
- Keep the pod.
Paste
- Spoon.
- Stir.
- Bake.
- Done.
Same bean.
Two ways in.
The whole bean rewards a cook with time to steep. The paste brings its flavour and its seeds in a spoon, wherever there is no time to infuse.
In professional kitchens
Our vanilla was tested side by side by the pastry teams of two Hilton hotels in Dubai: Waldorf Astoria DIFC and Conrad Dubai.
Thomas HaasOberoiMövenpickRoom4Dessert
“We used it in the praline. It gave a nice smoky flavor and good vanilla taste.”
08 · Continuity
Never run out.
Tell us how you cook and we will work out how much you need, and how often it should arrive. Change, pause or cancel whenever you like.
01 How do you cook with vanilla?
02 How much vanilla does your kitchen use?
Tell us what you make. We’ll work out what you need.
- Coffee or a drinkA small dab a cup · cups a week0
- Pancakes, bakes and glazesAbout ¾ teaspoon a batch · batches a month0
- Ice cream, custard or crème brûléeAbout 1½ teaspoons a batch · batches a month0
03 Your rhythm
About 0 teaspoons a month.
20% off every delivery · Free worldwide delivery · Pause, change or cancel whenever you like · 10% of every subscription goes back to our farmers
100 mL holds 20 teaspoons. 250 mL holds 50.
Cooking for more? Talk to us
09 · Measured
The numbers behind the flavour.
Natural vanillin, water activity, strength and shelf life for this paste, with its safety results and nutrition beneath.
- Species
- Vanilla planifolia
- Origin
- Papua, Indonesia
- Cure
- Bourbon, 10–12 weeks
- Appearance
- Dark brown paste, with seeds
- Alcohol
- None
- Added sugar
- None
- Flavour additives
- None
- Allergens
- None declared
- Process
- Dried · nitrogen frozen · ground whole · infused · cured three months
See the microbiology.
- Plate count
- ≤ 10² cfu/g
- Yeasts
- ≤ 10 cfu/g
- Moulds
- ≤ 10 cfu/g
- Coliforms
- Not detected
- E. coli
- Not detected
- Salmonella
- Absent in 25 g
See the nutrition.
- Energy
- About 315 kcal
- Protein
- 0.1–0.3 g
- Fat
- About 0.1 g
- Carbohydrate
- 68–69 g
- of which sugars
- 67–68 g, from the vegetable glycerin
- Fibre
- 1.0–1.3 g
- Calcium
- 1–2 mg
- Potassium
- 13–18 mg
- Sodium
- 0.5–1 mg
Per 100 g. No sugar is added.
Vanil A Bean · Bourbon Series
The whole bean, in a spoon.
A glass bottle with a black cap.
Bourbon Series · Single origin · Traceable
Bourbon Vanilla Bean Paste
Double fold · Alcohol-free · Ground whole bean · Papua, Indonesia
“A nice smoky flavor and good vanilla taste.”Waldorf Astoria DIFC pastry teamDelivery calculated at checkout
· 30-day replacement / refund guarantee
What people ask before their first bottle.
A spoonable vanilla. Whole cured beans are ground, seeds and shell together, and held in a vanilla extraction with a little guar gum so the seeds stay suspended. It gives the flavour of an extract and the specks of a scraped bean in one spoon.
Organic vegetable glycerin, water, natural vanilla extractive from our own beans, ground Bourbon vanilla beans and organic guar gum. Nothing else.
In-house, from start to finish. Grade A and Grade B Bourbon beans are dried to a fifth to a quarter water, frozen in liquid nitrogen and ground whole. The ground bean is folded into our six-month cold extraction, bound with organic guar gum, then cured for three months before it is bottled.
Twice the beans: two kilos of vanilla to every ten litres, against one kilo for a single fold. The same flavour in half the amount.
The paste wherever you want to see the seeds: creams, ice cream, custards, buttercream. Because it is double fold, use half the vanilla extract a recipe asks for. In a very white mix it darkens the colour slightly.
1½ teaspoons (7.5 ml) does the work of one Grade A bean.
As a guide: a small dab in a coffee, ¾ teaspoon for every 500 ml of milk in a pancake batter, 1 to 2 teaspoons for 500 ml of ice cream base, and 1½ teaspoons for 500 ml of cream in a crème brûlée or custard, or for a tray of roast carrots. Taste, then adjust.
Yes. The extraction uses vegetable glycerin and water, not alcohol, so there is nothing to cook off and no alcohol taste in no-bake desserts and drinks.
No sugar is added. Its mild natural sweetness comes from the vegetable glycerin, which the nutrition table counts under sugars.
The beans are organically farmed, and the vegetable glycerin and the guar gum are organic. The paste itself is not certified organic, so we do not call it organic.
It is not fair trade certified. We buy directly from the smallholder farmers who grow it, train them in sustainable farming and pay them fairly, with no middlemen.
On smallholder farms in Papua, Indonesia, in volcanic soil. Every batch is numbered back to the farms it came from.
The way it is cured: sun-dried by day and sweated in wooden boxes overnight, over several weeks. There is no bourbon, and no alcohol, in the paste.
Grades describe a cured pod's length, moisture and vanillin. Grade A pods are 16–23 cm long and hold 30–35% water; Grade B are 14–18 cm and drier, at 25–30%. Both are Bourbon-cured Planifolia from Indonesia.
No. Keep it closed, away from heat and direct sunlight, at 16–27 °C. Stir before use.
Two years, opened or unopened, as long as the bottle is closed after each use and kept as above.
None are declared: no gluten, dairy, egg, soy, nuts, fish, shellfish, sesame or sulphites.