Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Please excuse the long review, but I got a little obsessed as the strange tale of these vanilla beans unfolded. I bought these beans in spite of the negative reviews citing mold growth. I work at a company that makes scientific instruments that measure whether mold can grow on a product, so I was pretty sure I could sidestep that problem. I tested these beans when they arrived, and noted that their "water activity" was far too high (0.98) indicating they would mold if stored at that moisture level. Another puzzler: the beans appeared to be soaked in some sort of alcohol. The brownish liquid is even visible around the beans in the product picture. Real vanilla beans aren't soaked in alcohol - they are painstakingly dried and cured over a period of months. The only reason to soak a vanilla bean in alcohol is to extract its flavor to make, well, extract. Real vanilla beans also cost about $3-4 each. I decided these beans might be usable and shelf stable if I dried them out. This worked, except they appeared to have lost all their flavor in the process. Becoming more suspicious, I set up a taste test by making 5 batches of ice cream with different vanilla flavorings. The 5 types were: 1)no vanilla (custard only), 2)vanilla extract (Kirkland Signature), 3)Real $4 vanilla beans (purchased from King Arthur online), 4)JR Mushrooms Brand vanilla beans from the bag, and 5)JR Mushrooms Brand vanilla beans that had been dried to a level that won't cause mold growth. I got 12 people to taste test these ice cream batches. The averaged scores were (from high to low) 1. JR Mushrooms Brand vanilla beans, dried to a safe water activity. Score = 7.5/10 2. “Real” vanilla beans. Score = 7.3/10 3. No vanilla at all (unflavored custard). Score = 6.7/10 4. Vanilla extract. Score = 5.3/10 5. JR Mushrooms Brand vanilla beans, as packaged (wet). Score = 4.0/10 With only 12 participants, some of these scores are statistically indistinguishable from others. But it’s fascinating that the dried JR Mushrooms Brand beans have the highest score, while the JR Mushrooms beans when used straight from the bag have the lowest score. Taste testers complained that the JR Mushrooms wet beans made the ice cream taste like chemicals, and left a lingering off-flavor. I’m going to guess, though, that testers reacted to both what they saw and what they tasted. Custard, made of egg yolks, cream, half and half, and sugar, tastes pretty darn good all by its self. If you’re going to mess with that flavor, I think you have to improve it, which is what the real vanilla beans did. In the case of JR Mushrooms vanilla beans, I think there was little impact on the flavor, but they gave the dish an appearance of having real vanilla beans. That seems to be the winning ticket. We had 2 testers with a lot of culinary experience, and those two both picked out the real vanilla beans ice cream as the clear winner. I think the real vanilla packs the most powerful punch, too, but I knew which batch was which, and was probably biased. Time for a brief summary. I think the JR Mushrooms beans are just vanilla beans that have been used to make extract, and then bagged and sold to unsuspecting consumers. These beans may be useful as a way to show you used real vanilla, but they must be dried, and have little flavor if you actually do that. What’s more, they make your dessert taste like chemicals and create a mold hazard in their "wet" state. That’s not much of a bargain at any price.