Bees for Development Journal 112
HONEY PROCESSING – SOFT SET HONEY Text and images © Ken Basterfield, Westcott, Gerway Lane, Ottery St Mary, Devon EX11 1PW, UK Keywords: creamed honey, crystallization, fructose, glucose, granulation, seeding honey
and irregular rather than the preferred fine and smooth. • Honeys that are only partly set also do not sell well.
Many people are confused by the terms ‘soft set honey’ and ‘creamed honey’. They are equally likely to be confused by the term ‘seeding’, thinking that they are one and the same process. They are not.
Do you want to sell your set honey or are you content to let it sit on the shelf once it has passed to the retailer, with few or no re-orders? Start by answering ‘Yes’ to the first bit and ‘No’ to the last bit and we are making progress and the soft set process is your salvation.
Recently I heard a new beekeeper telling prospective customers that he beats his runny honey in a food blender to cream it, that is – he beats air into it to give it that opaque look. Some of the air had floated out and all the jars had large frothy heads. I could have simply dismissed this but I have to confess to having the same confusion forty years ago!
Soft set honey is smooth and fine and can be spread thickly and easily with a knife. It will be consumed quicker and a re-order should be guaranteed.
Granulation as a natural process
Honey is produced from nectar by, amongst other things, reducing the water content to less than 20%. This is done in the bees’ nest at about 35°C. The bees remove the excess water to help preserve it against yeast fermentation during winter storage.
The object of this article is to clarify the terminology and process of producing fine soft set honey.
Overview
Soft Set is a version of set honey that has its crystal nature broken up by mashing to give a spreadable texture similar to butter or margarine spreads and sometimes referred to as ‘creamed.’
Yeast can only proliferate and spoil the product if there is enough moisture in the product. There should be no surplus of water in a ripened honey, just enough to keep the sugars in solution. In honey, the solution of sugars in water is said to be near saturated: no spare water, hence no yeast spoilage. Clever little bees!
Most customers prefer a fine, smooth crystal size of soft set honey, but this cannot be guaranteed with natural setting. In particular, honey that has been liquefied and then undergoes a secondary set will almost invariably set with large, irregular, coarse grains.
As the honey is cooled away from the hive - in the comb, in a bucket or jar - it becomes ‘super saturated’. That is, at lower temperatures there is not enough water to keep the sugars still in solution and it is physically unstable.
Seeding This is an optional process which forces a ‘willing’ honey to granulate with a fine smooth crystal size.
It stabilises itself by crystallising out (‘granulating’ or ‘setting’) some or all of the sugars. The principal sugars in honey are fructose and glucose, and glucose is less soluble than fructose. Therefore honeys high in glucose will rapidly crystallise to a granular nature.
Honey marketing If you want return customers for your product then it must sell itself by its taste, appearance and texture. Naturally set honey is unattractive to most customers for a number of reasons: • It is usually ‘spoon bendingly’ hard and has to be chipped out of the jar.
This formation of crystals is like the construction of rigid scaffolding: the crystals link to give a rigid crystalline structure, which is how the natural set honey can become so hard.
• The granular texture is usually uncontrolled and can be coarse
With soft set honey the crystals still remain but the rigid crystal to crystal linking is broken physically by stirring. To be able to stir the set honey you need to warm it enough to soften the linking. Soft set honey should remain soft and be spreadable like soft margarine.
Which would the customer most like: coarsely granulated honey?
Or a lovely soft set honey?
• On setting, (granulating) in the jar it usually shrinks in volume and retreats from the glass wall, leaving mirrored or frosted areas which do not encourage confidence in its wholesomeness.
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