Vanilla
Vanilla fragrance for your Rainbow vacuum cleaners and Thermax vacuums. Suitable for any vacuum cleaner that uses water as the filter instead of bags, such as Hyla.
Chemistry
For the main article on chemistry, see vanillin.
Though there are many compounds present in the extracts of vanilla, the compound predominantly responsible for the characteristic flavor and smell of vanilla is known as vanillin (4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde). Another minor component of vanilla essential oil is piperonal (heliotropin). Piperonal and other substances affect the odour of natural vanilla.
Vanilla essence comes in two forms: the actual extract of the seedpods, and the far cheaper synthetic essence, basically consisting of a solution of synthetic vanillin in ethanol. Natural vanilla is an extremely complicated mixture of several hundred different compounds, versus synthetic vanillin which is derived from phenol and is of high purity.
[edit] Stages of production
- Step 1: Harvest
The beans are harvested green and immature. At this stage they are odorless.
- Step 2: Killing
The vegetative tissue of the vanilla pod is killed to prevent it from growing further after being harvested. The method of killing the tissue varies, but may be through: (1) sun killing, (2) oven killing, (3) hot water killing, (4) killing by scratching, or (5) killing by freezing.
- Step 3: Sweating
The beans are then held for 7 to 10 days
under humid and high temperature (45 º to 65 ºC) conditions, often by placing the beans in fabric covered boxes immediately after boiling. This allows enzymes to process the compounds in the beans into vanillin and other compounds important to the final vanilla flavor.
- Step 4: Drying
To prevent rotting and to lock the aroma in the pods, the beans are then dried, often by laying out in the sun during the mornings and then returned to their boxes in the afternoons. When the bean reaches 25-30% of its weight in moisture (as opposed to the 60-70% it began the drying process with) it has completed the curing process and will exhibit its fullest aromatic qualities.
- Step 5: Grading
When fully cured the vanilla is sorted by quality and graded.