Thick honey!! Help please..

[Trevor Gillbanks 6,846]

You can put them in a closed up vehicle on a hot day.  Make sure the windows are closed or you might have a couple of visitor arrive.

[Philippa Thomas 61]

33 minutes ago, lexy said:

 I have a similar problem to deal with at some point. I spun out my honey into 15 buckets (about 25kg kg each). Usually at that point I'd homogenize it all in a vat and straight into jars.

 

Due to lockdown the jars didnt arrive and it solidified in the buckets... now i have to figure out how to melt it all at the same time whilst minimising HMF increase as much as possible (its manuka so HMF will be lab tested)

 

Im thinking perhaps sitting the buckets in a bath at about 37c and opening them to stir occasionally until melted?

I have done this before with solidified buckets, but the water needs to be a lot hotter than 37 degrees or it will not work. The honey in the bucket will not reach the temperature of the water if it is only left in there until it is thin enough to pot and is stirred frequently. Just keep checking the temperature of the honey with a thermometer. More hot water will need to be added to the bath frequently.

These days I only extract when I know I can pot straight after, and anything extracted after December is creamed, this as a result of experiencing much of the above.

 

On 16/02/2020 at 1:38 PM, Alastair said:

Yes you can melt it.

 

But the way of least work, is to pack the honey into jars straight away while it is still liquid. And store those jars in a deep freeze. Not a fridge. The honey will not freeze, but the cold temperature slows everything down and the honey will stay un crystalised for years.

 

Not a fridge because that has the opposit effect, at that temperature honey will crystalise quickly.

I put some of my very first honey harvest in the freezer to stop it crystallizing, and six months later it had set into the finest texture I have ever seen. There was no detectable crystals at all, much like butter. I used it to cream my next season's batch and thereafter.

[lexy 98]

i like the idea of just chucking it in a van or something, nice and easy - but i dont think it provides enough control, like I could reach the end of the day and have half melted honey.

 

sounds like a bath is the way... another question occurs - how long will it remain liquid at room temp? homogenizing and jarring would take maybe 2 days:-(

 

urgh. 

[yesbut 6,230]

9 minutes ago, lexy said:

how long will it remain liquid at room temp? homogenizing and jarring would take maybe 2 days:-(

 

You will be ok for a couple of days, but if it's kanuka the warmer the better for jarring. Mine comes off the hive > scraped > jarred all within a couple of hours in a sunny January kitchen. One of the plusses in not getting carried away with hive numbers for no good reason , harvesting stays manageable without gear.

[Sailabee 1,102]

Don't see how the bath system would fit with and NP 1 and for that amount of honey, would think that that would be important. Perhaps a bigger commercial would have space in a hot room - if it's still running, to empty buckets into 200 lt drums, so a drum heater could be used to liquefy. If any crystalised honey remains, creaming will not stop it crystalising again as I understand it.

[Trevor Gillbanks 6,846]

5 minutes ago, Sailabee said:

If any crystalised honey remains, creaming will not stop it crystalising again as I understand it.

 

Correct.  You need to melt out every crystalized cell or it will take on the crystal size of the original crystals.

[Philippa Thomas 61]

1 hour ago, Trevor Gillbanks said:

 

Correct.  You need to melt out every crystalized cell or it will take on the crystal size of the original crystals.

And the honey will have to be rather hot before that happens.  Does lexy mind what the texture is like or does he/she just want to get it into jars?

[kevin moore 680]

On 16/02/2020 at 11:33 AM, Snap said:

Thxs Alastair, to be honest I haven’t had a chance to eat my honey yet..but I stirred up everything and stored into a  20l container.

last year I dispensed honey into small individual bottles..

over the winter, the honey when into crystallized. Therefore this year I decided to keep bulk in container and thinking it can easily be stir back to liquid

 

like all bee keepers and extractors is pretty much a given that you taste a bit on your finger when working honey, frames etc 

[lexy 98]

On 5/9/2020 at 12:39 PM, Sailabee said:

Don't see how the bath system would fit with and NP 1 and for that amount of honey, would think that that would be important. Perhaps a bigger commercial would have space in a hot room - if it's still running, to empty buckets into 200 lt drums, so a drum heater could be used to liquefy. If any crystalised honey remains, creaming will not stop it crystalising again as I understand it.

sorry, a long time getting back to this.... on the plus side its not an urgent problem to resolve:-) 

 

true, thats a good idea. There is a commercial outfit nearby i could call on, I could just let it bulk mature until next season then chuck it in and deal with it then.

 

Id just warm it enough so that its liquid, its finely grained

[lexy 98]

On 5/9/2020 at 2:13 PM, Philippa Thomas said:

And the honey will have to be rather hot before that happens.  Does lexy mind what the texture is like or does he/she just want to get it into jars?

luckily its extremely fine grained so all i have to to is make it liquid enough to homogenize and jar:-)

[lexy 98]

On 5/9/2020 at 9:16 AM, Philippa Thomas said:

 

I put some of my very first honey harvest in the freezer to stop it crystallizing, and six months later it had set into the finest texture I have ever seen. There was no detectable crystals at all, much like butter. I used it to cream my next season's batch and thereafter.

 

ages ago I read a paper that researched tempersture and crystal size - their theory was that lower temp reduced the mobility of glucose so it couldnt clump up and form large crystals

[NickWallingford 317]

7 hours ago, lexy said:

 

ages ago I read a paper that researched tempersture and crystal size - their theory was that lower temp reduced the mobility of glucose so it couldnt clump up and form large crystals

 

Warning: I am not a honey specialist, but I do like Van Morrison.  This is mostly from memory of the history and science, and without checking things, I may well make a mistake or two, and trust some on the list who really know this stuff to correct me.

 

The ratio of dextrose:levulose (Damn sugars always have more than one name, and I can never remember which to use - fructose?) is significant.  If the dextrose predominates (Viper's bugloss, peppermint, most honeys?), the honey will granulate very slowly with big crystals, an unpleasant texture for many people.  If there is more levulose (cf. Southern rata, pohutukawa) it will granulate quickly, and with a fine grain.  Sucrose (a.k.a. glucose - see what I mean about names?) is present as a quite small percentage in many honeys, but doesn't play so much a part in the granulation process, I think.  Diastase, an enzyme in nectar, is used to break down the complex sugars (sucrose) into simple sugars (dextrose, levulose) for the most part.  The lack of the complex sugar in honey is one perceived health advantage, as the human body doesn't break sugars so easily as the honeybee does...

 

If you use enough heat to liquify all the sugar crystals, and not so much heat that you really over-heat it, eventually it will crystalise again.  Honey is a super-saturated sugar solution.  If the honey you are starting with is fine grained, it is likely that will be the one to set the entire container.   If, after re-liquifying - no longer hot, but not starting to recrystalise - you add some fine grained honey and stir, you've got the rudimentary principles of creamed honey...

 

And to leave you with a misc. factoid: Tupelo honey, produced in the SE of the US has so much levulose content that it will stay liquid almost forever, even in conditions suitable for granulation.  Van Morrison made it famous: "She's as sweet as tupelo honey."