Vanilla essence

Happy New Year all!

After spending the latter part of last year shelling out a fortune for vanilla essence, I decided to follow in the footsteps of Tamami and try and make my own for 2012. It was a lot more straightforward than I was expecting, the most tricky part was tracking down a suitable bottle to hold the stuff in (I laid my hands on a bottle from Lakeland). Here's all I had to do:

1. Put bottle in pan of water and boil for 10 minutes to sterilise.
2. Split and scrape vanilla pods and place in bottle (pod and paste). I also cut my pods in half so they fit into the bottle. 
3. Add vodka to bottle (Quantities are 30g vanilla pods to 250g alcohol).
4. Place top on bottle and shake vigorously.
5. Leave in a dark corner, shake the bottle occasionally and after 5 weeks......hey presto!!

Looking forward to trying my own brew :)

My only quandry now is what to do with my remaining 220g of vanilla pods?!!

 Scummy water from the big smoke is giving my bottle that frosted look, char!!