Like many who have contributed to this thread over the past decade, I have been nursing a jar of vanilla for several years, started back in the good old days when a pound of perfectly serviceable beans could be had for sub-$20. A few weeks ago I happened on a forgotten stash of those beans, which I was even happier to discover were still vacuum sealed. Recently I came across an article about infusing vanilla in the pressure cooker so I decided to give it a shot. I filled 5 eight-ounce mason jars with 20 grams each of chopped fresh beans and beans fished out of my working bottle, then added 60ml each of cheap vodka and everclear. An hour in the Instant Pot at high pressure, natural release, resulted in a lovely dark, nicely perfumed infusion - has a fairly sharp alcohol aroma and flavor, but less than I expected. Definitely a great way to jumpstart a batch. For comparison, below is a photo of the bottle into which I dumped a bunch of the used beans and equal amounts of vodka and everclear just now; the pressure cooked batch; and the bottle that has been brewing in my basement since sometime in the late oughts. The lighting is not the best, but the color of the pressure cooked bottle is virtually indistinguishable from the legacy bottle.
