Beanilla’s excellent Madagascar, Tonga, Mexico, and Papua New Guinea vanilla beans are already featured on this site. Recently, they added India and Indonesia grown planifolia pods. Brent at Beanilla sent these vacuum-packed samples for review. Rarely do you find two beans with such different and distinct aromas, it’s an exciting and obvious contrast.

India planifolia (Grade A – $36.50 for 8 ounces, 1/2 pound)

More and more India vanilla is coming on the market. Two years ago it was difficult to track down, but in the past six months I’ve evaluated several samples.

Beanilla’s India vanilla beans are dark brown in color. The skins have a beautiful texture, the smoothness and sheen of the pods are evidence of expert curing. The pods are well-shaped and very flexible.  These vanilla beans are turgid with caviar.

Inside, the vanilla pods are oily and gooey. Sticky strings form as the bean is pulled apart. The aroma is dark and rich, with strong overtones of chocolate and prune. There’s a large yield of thick, moldable, and very oily caviar in each bean.

Indonesia planifolia (Grade A – $35.98 for 8 ounces, 1/2 pound)

Indonesia vanilla beans are often picked too early, and the curing process is typically hasty and unrefined. Gourmet Indonesia vanilla is rare; there’s only one other example on this site.

Beanilla’s Indonesia grown beans are black in color. The pods are flexible, but flat and not plump. The skins are moderately oily and only moderately supple, but these are still among the best cured Indonesia beans I’ve evaluated.

The caviar is pillowy and light. It has plenty of moisture, but isn’t especially sticky. Caviar yield is moderate. The beans have a spicy, cinnamon aroma that is a noticeable contrast to the India beans’ chocolate notes.

Amadeus shipped the beans in loosely sealed plastic bags. Watch out for the minimum order charge if you just get the sampler, like I did. Glenn at Amadeus has been a great resource for this article. This is “the” place to buy Uganda Planifolia vanilla beans. Their sampler pack is a great way to start your extract collection.

Indonesia Planifolia (Grade A)
A darker-smelling bean, very moist. The fragrance was warm and spicy, like cardamom, coffee, or incense, but also a bit chemical somehow. Very long and pretty beans, but not the strongest fragrance.

Madagascar Planifolia (Grade A) Regular and Super Long
These have the ‘classic’ vanilla aroma. Both the regular and super long varieties had plenty of caviar. The super longs are well cured, with a pliable but firm skin. Instructables member cdrivanova ordered the 1/4 lb sampler pack with the regular sized Madagascar beans, you can verify the quality of these beans in her Flickr photo set.

Glenn at Amadeus Trading sent me the Super Long beans to replace an order of regular sized beans that were short, dry, and stick-like (see Madagascar vanilla comparison). Amadeus acknowledged the problem and sent replacement beans. While there was nothing wrong with the original beans flavor-wise, they didn’t meet my (or Glenn’s) expectations for Grade A vanilla beans.

Papua New Guinea (PNG) Planifolia (Grade A)
While these were the next-smallest beans (after Madagascar) from Amadeus, their caviar yield was rather high. It smelled the most “vanilla-like” of all the beans, with a soft and velvety fragrance that made me think of ice cream, or some kind of skin lotion. The smell was decidedly creamy. This is my favorite (smelling) vanilla to date.

Uganda Gold ™ Planifolia (Grade A)
Very big beans, longer and thicker than most I’ve seen. They were so big that they were the obvious choice for the pictures in this instructable. Yields a lot of caviar. The smell was tangy and fruity, like figs or certain multicolored breakfast cereals. Amadeus appears to be ”the” source for this particular bean. Glenn says these are available in extract grade:

“The organic grade 1 Bourbon beans we sell on our website are Uganda origin beans. So if you want to give those a try, you should get some impressive results. We have just had our latest shipment tested, and one supplier’s beans tested at .27% vanillin content — that’s extremely high (a good vanillin content for Madagascar beans is .17% – .19% — in past years we saw “really good” results as high as .19% – .21%. So these Uganda beans are really something!” Glenn Gottlieb, Amadeus Trading Company, e-mail, 22-DEC-2007.

UPDATE: Instructables member pbwingman11 posted some pictures of the Uganda extract beans on flickr.