Yes, Vanilla beans can spoil, but...

The "legend" (that's what my kids call my long stories)--vanilla beans are a unique agricultural product that are very labor intensive as they are hand pollinated, hand picked, cured, sorted, packaged, shipped, packaged again, shipped again (sometimes several times), and then finally get to you. During that whole process, if conditions aren't perfect, mold can grow, and unfortunately, there's really no way to know if the vanilla beans were mishandled or harvested a day too early until the white spots start to appear. Certain varieties--especially the ones that are shipped to us immediately after finishing curing so they are extremely fresh--tend to be more prone to mold than others. Lately, Ugandan and Indonesian seem to have been struggling the most, because they're fresh and plump (which is what makes them so wonderful and delicious, but can have drawbacks).

When vanilla beans arrive to us, we bean wranglers carefully inspect them and remove anything that has spoiled. For the very fresh beans, we will lay them out on trays for a few days to breathe. We rinse them in 80 proof white rum as a food-safe cleanser and mold inhibitor. To save on packaging costs, for group orders in the United States, we have opted to use Ziplock bags and purple poly mailers. This process has proven to be very effective and safe and cheap for mailing, allowing us to keep prices as low as possible. The loss from spoilage during transit to you all is low enough that we can refund or replace the few that have problems. However, Ziplock bags are not a good option for storage.

Retail orders, placed through IndriVanilla.com, are vacuum sealed.

I don't want anyone to panic. If you're ordering through a group order, please feel confident in our guarantee that the vanilla beans will arrive in good condition. If you open a purple mailer that's just arrived and there's mold (distinguished by white, fuzzy patches that smear or squish and smell cheesy or bad; hard, sugary white speckles are actually vanillin crystals and are very good), snap some photos and send us a picture via email ASAP. Our email address is indrisvanillabeangroup@gmail.com. PLEASE, however, be prepared to receive your order. On group orders, we must ship in large groups in order to keep prices low, so note the turnaround time listed on the form and watch that Individual Order Look-up Tool and your email for when we ship your beans. It breaks our hearts when we hear that something has gone wrong and it's outside the scope of our guarantee.

A couple final requests--vanilla beans prefer warm over cold, so if it is hot where you live, please don't panic about the summer heat causing your beans to spoil any faster. Please don't panic about being out of town for a few days. The Individual Order Look-up Tool has options for changing addresses if you're moving or going on an extended vacation. Please don't panic about the postal service being slower than you'd like. Please don't panic about beans you've forgotten about in the past, but have no visible on mold on them. They're still good. Like I said, mold only grows when beans haven't been perfectly harvested or cured, or when they're still super fresh and need to breathe. They *may* go years without any issues! They're just funny that way. Just... please don't panic. About anything. Life's too short to panic. We're here to help.

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