There’s no better way to steal the crowd’s attention than with fancy and delicious vanilla cake during the holiday season. You open your ingredient inventory and expect to see the all-perfect vanilla beans. But… What are these odd circles on the vanilla beans’ surface? No, no, that’s not damaged vanilla beans. It’s just a handmade mark.
Although the vanilla tattoos on your vanilla beans have nothing to do with the freshness or the taste, you might change your mind to use flawless vanilla beans by the time you finish reading this article. It’s because that: The tattooed vanilla beans are not a perfect match for some applications in baking or cooking.
Tattoo on… Vanilla Beans in Bulk?
You didn’t read wrong; these odd circles on your wholesale vanilla pods are known as vanilla tattoos. These vanilla bean tattoos are merely a human-made mark, the scars intentionally created on the surface of vanilla beans by the farmers prior to harvest.
Why Are Farmers Tattooing Their Bulk Vanilla Beans?
The popularity of marking vanilla beans in bulk or vanilla tattoos started when the vanilla crisis happened in Madagascar back in 2017. Just like the law of supply and demand, while the stock of bulk vanilla beans plunged down, the price of vanilla beans in bulk drastically increased. At that time, even the vanilla crisis increased the bulk vanilla beans’ price to the level where the massive theft of bulk vanilla beans happened throughout the country.
This crop insecurity issue has lowered the farmers’ total production volume of vanilla beans in bulk caused by thieves. Turned the farmers to look for a way to save their bulk vanilla beans before experiencing further losses.
The top method used by the farmers goes to mark bulk vanilla beans with vanilla bean tattoos—a sequence of letters in vanilla bean tattoos meaning the farmers’ initial name. The farmers will engrave only the selected vanilla beans, meaning that not all vanilla beans will have this mark. Later, this vanilla bean tattoo meaning as a code to identify the owners of the bulk vanilla beans when a theft happens.
Thanks to the Madagascar vanilla bean farmers, this vanilla tattoo method has spread throughout the vanilla bean farmers across the world. Vanilla bean tattoo has successfully saved more vanilla beans in bulk from the risk of theft.
How to Tattoo Vanilla Beans in Bulk?
After knowing why vanilla tattoos exist, the next question that comes into your mind is what’s in the title. Unlike the tattooing process on human skin, tattooing vanilla beans doesn’t involve ink or any other coloring chemicals. Instead, vanilla bean tattoo meaning as an all-natural hand-processing method in wholesale vanilla bean production.
In executing vanilla tattoo making, the farmers only need a needle or other prick instruments to pierce a cluster of small dots that forms a sequence of initial words on the vanilla beans’ surface. The ‘vanilla beans protection’ starts when the pods are grown. That’s why the green-colored or raw vanilla beans oftentimes have the vanilla tattoo on the surface. In addition, it will be easier to carve on the stiff surface of raw vanilla beans instead of the wrinkled surface and bendable ripe vanilla beans.
Are Tattooed Vanilla Beans Safe to Consume?
Long story short, yes, absolutely. The vanilla bean tattoos are just the scars that have healed. It won’t impact the overall taste of the vanilla beans. However, vanilla tattoos might degrade the grades of vanilla beans.
Some vanilla suppliers will consider vanilla tattoos a defect and degrade the vanilla beans’ grades from A to B. Although vanilla tattoos have nothing to do with the final quality of vanilla beans, some vanilla suppliers choose to play safe for customer satisfaction. On the flip side, since these tattooed vanilla beans are still safe to consume, the other vanilla suppliers refuse to lower the vanilla beans’ grades if only based on this reason.
Where to Find A Dependable Vanilla Supplier for Wholesale Vanilla Beans?
Things might be different if you plan to use vanilla beans for decoration purposes. Decorating baked goods with perforated vanilla beans from the vanilla tattoo is just… not a good execution. That’s why you need a change to no-mark vanilla beans for your gourmet recipes. Essence Food & Beverage, LLC provides you with wholesale vanilla beans without vanilla tattoos, without any strange marks, and only rows of flawless vanilla beans in bulk.
We are a direct-trade vanilla supplier that supplies wholesale vanilla beans directly from the source. We consciously source our bulk vanilla beans from single-estate plantations in Java Island of Indonesia. It is guaranteed that our vanilla beans in bulk are hand-picked and hand-sorted before being shipped to our customers.
Check our vanilla catalog or request vanilla beans in bulk estimate here and get superior-quality vanilla beans in bulk.
