Our story
Patience is the main ingredient
Cask & Pod makes vanilla extract the slow way: whole beans, twice the usual measure, a premium spirit, and months of waiting.
The founders
Every Christmas, a Batch Goes Down
Every December, somewhere between the cookie baking and the wrapping paper, my son Timothy and I clear the kitchen table, split open a pile of vanilla beans, and lay them down in bottles of good bourbon and vodka. Then we wait.
By the time the next Christmas rolls around, the last bottle from the year before is running dry, and the new batch is just coming ready. That rhythm is how Cask & Pod began. Long before it was a company, it was a ritual between a father and his son.
We Couldn’t Buy What We Wanted
The truth is that we started making our own because we couldn’t find what we were looking for. The extracts on the grocery shelf were thin and sharp, and they tasted more of the alcohol than the bean. The better bottles were hard to find, harder to justify, and still left us wanting more.
And every one of them was, more or less, the same vanilla in a different bottle. We wanted depth: the kind you can smell from across the kitchen the moment the cap comes off. We wanted range: one vanilla for a bourbon pecan pie, another for Christmas cookies, another for a cup of coffee on a cold morning.
We couldn’t find anyone making vanilla the way we wanted it made. So we made it ourselves.
A Rule From the Candy Kitchen
Tim’s grandfather, my father-in-law, built and ran a well-loved confectionery company in the Midwest. He spent a lifetime around sugar, chocolate and vanilla, and he had one rule he never bent: “You can’t turn inferior raw materials into a superior product.”
We took him at his word. We went to the suppliers of the finest beans we could find, and we made our extract double-fold, with twice the beans of a standard-strength vanilla. For the spirit, we used only brands we’d happily pour for ourselves.
Great vanilla shouldn’t have to fight its way past the bite of a cheap alcohol. Ours never has to.
Then Word Got Out
Because we were making it for ourselves, we never rushed it. Then a brother asked if there was an extra bottle. Then a sister, a cousin, a niece, a nephew, a co-worker, and a friend of a friend who’d tasted it in someone else’s kitchen.
Each Christmas the batch got bigger, and the list of people waiting on it got longer. But growing never changed the rule. More bottles meant more of the best beans and more good spirit, never a shortcut.
The Glass Over Ice
Once our process gave us the same rich result year after year, we started to wonder what else it could do. The spark came from somewhere we never expected. One of the people on our list took a bottle of our 12-month-aged bourbon vanilla, poured it straight over ice, and sipped it like a cocktail.
We don’t recommend it. But it stopped us in our tracks. If our vanilla was good enough that someone wanted to drink it, what else could it be the foundation for?
That question set us on a long, painstaking road: our Extract Blends. Each one starts with our double-fold vanilla and adds flavors chosen for a purpose, from the smoke and spice of Smoke & Stone to the cranberry and orange of Bog & Peel. Every recipe went through batch after batch of tasting, adjusting and arguing at the kitchen table before it earned its name.
This is the variety we went looking for years ago and never found. Now it’s on our shelf.
From Hobby to Craft
For me, Cask & Pod has always been a good excuse to spend time with my son. Tim and I share a habit: when we pick up a hobby, we go deep. We’ve taken bread baking courses, learned wood joinery, and worked our way through the techniques of French cooking.
We’re happiest in the details, the small things that separate a hobby from a craft. Vanilla may be the deepest of them all. It rewards patience, punishes shortcuts, and gives the two of us a reason to stand at the same table every Christmas.
From Our Table to Yours
Every bottle of Cask & Pod is made the way we’ve always made it for our family: the finest beans we can source, spirits worth pouring on their own, and the time it takes to do it right. We hope it finds a place in your kitchen, and maybe, in time, in your own traditions.
— Scott & Timothy Watts, founders, Cask & Pod, Hudsonville, Michigan
The name
A cask, and a pod
The cask is the spirit: premium bourbon with its barrel warmth, clean premium vodka, and for the blends, a spiced rum. The pod is the vanilla bean itself, split and steeped until the spirit has drawn out everything it holds.
Between the two sits time. Like a fine wine, a vanilla extract changes in the bottle. Sharp edges round off; the vanilla deepens and the spirit settles beneath it. Cask & Pod lets that happen at its own pace, and names each bottle for how long it waited.
How it is made
Four steps, and a long rest
The beans
Whole Madagascar vanilla beans, split along their length to open the seeds to the spirit.
Double-fold
Twice the beans of a standard extract in every bottle, for twice the vanilla in every teaspoon.
The rest
Nine months for Premier Cru, twelve for Grand Cru, kept cool and dark and turned regularly.
The bottle
Bottled by hand in amber glass in small batches, each with its own batch number and dates.