Powdered vanilla products

There is a high demand in our industry for powdered vanilla products, but there is also a lot of confusion surrounding the terms used to describe and label these products. This blog will provide you with everything you need to know!

Pure Vanilla Powder

This is a revolutionary product developed by Raymond Lochhead. It is a pure vanilla flavoring in a powdered form. What exactly does this mean? Well, we first extract the vanilla beans in a similar way we would for Pure Vanilla Extract, and then we blend the extracted flavoring with dextrose derived from tapioca or sucrose. This product can be used as a one-for-one substitution for pure vanilla extract or pure vanilla paste. It shines particularly well in coffee and tea, in oatmeal, in pie crusts, in frostings, and in smoothies or as a flavoring agent for protein powders and other dry mixes. It is white in appearance and has a clean, fresh, pure vanilla flavor. The majority of this product is dextrose or sucrose.

This product can (and is) labeled as a pure vanilla product under FDA guidelines. This is because the flavoring components that make up the flavor of the product are derived totally from vanilla beans.

Natural and Artificial Vanilla Powders

Though we do not sell these products on our website, we do offer them to our larger, wholesale customers. 

These flavorings are very similar to pure vanilla powder in that they are in a dextrose or sucrose base. However, they differ in that they are either a blend of pure vanilla extractives and artificial flavorings like vanillin and ethyl vanillin (this would be labeled as a natural product per the FDA) or the flavoring agents are entirely of artificial origin (vanillin and ethyl vanillin).

These products offer a strong, but less complex vanilla flavor and are most often used in industrial applications.

Vanillin, Ethyl Vanillin, and other Artificial Flavoring Agents

It is possible to purchase pure vanillin (or other artificial flavors). We do not generally recommend this route except for customers with very large applications. This is because a little goes a very long way with these artificial flavorings and without a very high degree of control, they will impart a metallic or chemical taste to the end product. For more on vanillin, see this blog.

Exhausted Ground Vanilla Beans

Though we do not sell these products on our website, we do offer them to our larger, wholesale customers. 

These are vanilla beans that have been extracted to manufacture vanilla extract and are then dried and ground. This product imparts little to no flavor to the end product but does provide visual interest similar to that of exhausted vanilla bean seeds at a lower cost.

Exhausted Ground Vanilla Bean Seeds

Though we do not sell these products on our website, we do offer them to our larger, wholesale customers. 

These are vanilla beans that have been extracted to manufacture vanilla extract and are then dried, ground, and sifted through a fine mesh. The mesh separates the vanilla bean seeds from the fibrous pods. This product imparts little to no flavor to the end product but does provide visual interest often desirable in ice creams. Due to the high demand for this product, we require that vanilla extract be purchased with seeds. 

Fresh Ground Vanilla Beans

Though we do not sell these products on our website, we do offer them to our larger, wholesale customers. 

These are vanilla beans that have been ground and then passed through a fine mesh to create a powdered consistency. There is a huge demand for this product, especially for customers who value a "clean" label, but ultimately, we do not recommend this product to our customers for several reasons.

1. In order to grind the vanilla beans, the beans need to be quite dry. This is not ideal for vanilla bean usage and destroys much of the flavor profile.
2. Generally speaking, vanilla beans need to be extracted to impart any real flavor to the final product. Across the board, simply putting ground vanilla beans into say a protein powder will not impart any real flavor to the end product. Given the expense of this product, it is a real missed opportunity. We recommend for this reason that you either use vanilla extract, powder, or paste, in which the vanilla beans have already been effectively extracted and thus flavor is easily imparted to the final product. Or we recommend you use whole vanilla beans and extract them yourself. This method is used most often by pastry chefs and artisanal ice cream makers because it is time-consuming and labor-intensive. The vanilla beans are split, chopped, and then extracted in warm milk or cream. Even in these very particular applications, the flavor profile that is achieved is one of a very delicate vanilla flavor. This is because even with gentle heat, extracting vanilla beans for 15 minutes to an hour does not fully extract the vanilla beans. (For reference, our vanilla extract is made by extracting the vanilla beans for two weeks in an industrial percolator where the alcohol and water are constantly circulated through the vanilla beans allowing for efficient extraction.) The only possible application where we would recommend using fresh ground vanilla beans is in dry tea sachets. As the tea bags will be extracted in hot water and steeped for a few minutes, the end result will be a delicate vanilla flavor profile. Still, this is a very expensive and inefficient method to impart vanilla flavor.
3. As mentioned above, fresh ground vanilla beans come from whole vanilla beans and are therefore very expensive. Given the inefficiency of the resulting vanilla flavor, your money is much better spent on either pure vanilla extract (or paste or powder) or whole vanilla beans.

The bottom line is that we suggest you carefully choose a powdered vanilla product based on your final application, batch size, and labeling/flavor needs. And please, don't blindly buy fresh ground vanilla beans just because they are trendy!!!