Fermented Honey in my Tummy

Two posts ago I wrote about how my absent mindedness led to three partly filled pails of honey fermenting.  I knew the honey was not all cured and intended to check it for it's water content and then I forgot.

[Photo - a jar of cooked honey and cinnamon covered apples]

The result was fermented honey.  So I put two pails in the freezer where they'd sit and wait until I decided what to do with them.  The third I thought I'd experiment with.

I cooked it down into a thick sweet syrup--the idea here was to save the honey for personal consumption, not to sell it.

After boiling it down the taste wasn't bad but there was still a fruity flavour to it.  In my estimation it was edible but not tasty enough to put in my cup of tea.

But put into baking I hoped it'd do well and hide the slight fermentation flavour.

I made Apple Crisp.  I admit that I don't cook much.  I made regular traditional apple crisp first using white and brown sugar.  It turned out great and now I had a taste comparison.

Next I used the same recipe but substituted honey for the white sugar. 

I am very pleased to report it turned out fabulously!  I can breathe a sigh of relief now that I know the honey can be put to use.

Apple Crisp

10 cups all purpose apples, peeled and sliced

1 cup honey (used instead of 1 cup of white sugar)

1 tablespoon all purpose flour

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/4 to 1/2 cup water

Topping

1 cup quick cooking oats

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup brown sugar – packed

½ cup melted butter

Directions- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (75 degrees C)

- Mostly fill a baking dish with the sliced apples. Mix the honey, flour, water and cinnamon together and spoon over the apples. (Additional water can be added if the honey is very thick and less if its very runny).

- Topping – combine oats, flour, brown sugar and melted butter together. Crumble evenly over the

apples

- Bake at 350 (175C) for 30 to 45 minutes

Serve warm with ice cream or a splash of milk. It’s good cold too.

And finally, don't forget to buy a refractometer so you can check your honey.

Bartender - I'll have a Bee Drink Please

I think one of the best parts of joining your local bee club is how you spend your break time, drinking coffee and talking to fellow beekeepers.

[Photo from a bee meeting, fellow beekeepers Janice, Brad and Dave]


That's where the bee advice flows a-plenty and the real stories come out.

Like this one.

A local person found a fellow beekeeper through his web site and called.  He wanted to make a purchase.  Of dead bees.

Yes, dead.

So my fellow beekeeper lifted up the deep and scooped up a cup or so of dead bees.  He had to set a price so he charged $5.00.

The happy customer left with their dead bees.

Are wondering what on earth they will do with dead bees?  They put them in water and cook them.  Then they strain the body parts out, saving the liquid.  Then they add alcohol to the water.

And next they drink it.  <<gross!>>

Apparently it's very a common health recipe that Polish and Russian people drink.

There you go--another product line a beekeeper can offer for sale.  So don't hesitate to join your local bee club and get educated!

A Sad Honey Tale

This is a sad tale about an absent minded beekeeper and a couple pails of honey.

It was the end of the season (late August).  Those honey supers all needed to come off.  Many frames were not fully capped, others had mostly cured honey and some had nectar.  Because I needed to put treatments on I had to take them all off the hives.

We extracted the honey, doing our best to keep the more runny honey separate.  My plan was to check it later to see if it was cured enough so it wouldn't ferment.

All went well except for the last part.  At the end of the season I had so many other things to do that I got really busy.

And I forgot. 

A couple months went by. I was collecting a pail so I could make creamed honey. It was then I discovered my mistake. When I took off the lid I could smell fermentation. And the honey tasted a little fruity.

The surface of the pail was very liquidy - the water on top and crystallized honey below. I felt sick about it. Three pails were affected. Thank God they weren't all completely full.

Two are in the freezer which will hold them in stasis. I'm not sure what can be done with them. I'm hoping they can be used for mead. (I can't stand waste and I don't think I could throw it out).

[Photo - water steams will the honey heats in a double boiler].

One pail I thought I would cook to see if that would improve the flavour. It certainly wouldn't be used for sale but hopefully it could be used for baking.

I created a double boiler with water in a pot and a bamboo steamer. Then another pot with the honey in it was set in. The water steamed away and I cooked the honey slowly for an hour or so. It did thicken and the flavour did improve. I wouldn't use it to sweeten my tea but I think it'll be okay in baking, like muffins or banana bread. I'll have to report back on that.

This has been hard to write about because I'm so mad at myself. The bees worked so hard to make it so how could I forget to check it?  Ihave to accept that it just happened, learn from it and move on.

I will get a refractometer so I can be sure the honey's moisture content is below 18%. [Photo - honey darkens when heated at higher temperatures].

So please learn from my mistake and remember to check your honey for it's water content before you set those jars on the shelf and move on to life's busy non-bee related things.

How to Make Creamed Honey

Making creamed honey is easy to do.  You don't have to be a beekeeper to make it. That's because all you need is… liquid honey and some seed honey.

Over time natural honey will soon develop large chunky crystals. It's not a sign that the honey is bad and the honey won't taste any different. It's just that the crystals aren't so pleasant on the tongue. These crystals have square corners that feel sharp and give an unpleasant sensation.

Enter Prof. Dyce from the University of Cornell. He developed a process to control the formation of crystals so that smooth oval shaped crystals are created. These are very spreadable and smooth on the tongue.

But how do you get these smooth oval crystals in your honey?

It's easy: You buy them.

Visit your local established beekeeper. He'll have creamed honey on hand. Try it first, paying attention not to the flavour of the honey but to the feel and sensation of the crystals on your tongue. If they're appealing then buy some.

Use that creamed honey to seed your clear honey by inserting a tablespoon or more into a jar. Then stir the crystals in thoroughly and put the whole thing in the fridge for about two weeks. Presto! You'll have smooth, non drip, spreadable creamed honey. Your own honey gives the flavour but the smooth seed crystals give the texture.

How does this happen? Our favourite golden liquid has a trick or two up its sleeve. If you give clear honey smooth crystals it will replicate them naturally. The term is 'following suit'. The small crystals prevent the formation of larger crystals. It's very similar to how yogurt and cheese are made, although they use cultures as seed.

[Photo - this jar is 90% crystalized - notice the bottom 1" that hasn't converted yet. It's important to stir the seed right to the bottom. With this jar the spoon and beater wouldn't reach the bottom].

By the way, other terms for creamed honey are Whipped Honey, Spun Honey, Churned Honey, Candied Honey, Honey Fondant and Set Honey. All are processed naturally through controlling the crystallization.

[Photo - two buckets of purchased creamed honey that I use as seed for my own.  The electric beater stirs the seed very well but it's not long enough to reach the bottom of tall jars.]

Beekeepers don't forget this is another product line you can sell.  Non drip creamed honey is great for kids and not so messy.  Moms have less clean up in the kitchen and that's a big selling point.

Honey can be stirred using an electric drill - see photo below.  This is a paint stirring drill attachment that I purchased from the local hardware store.

More info on making Creamed Honey can be found through these links:

Creamed Honey - Dyce Method
Wikipedia - Honey

Heating and Freezing Honey

Heating Honey:

In the previous post we looked at why honey crystallizes. Since it's a natural for the sugars in honey to crystallize over time, what's the best method to re-liquefy it?

The answer is to use heat, but the question is how much?

The melting point of crystallized honey is between 40 and 50 °C (104 and 122 °F). Too much heat will destroy the nutritional elements of honey. Heating up to 37 °C (98.6 °F) causes loss of nearly 200 components, some of which are antibacterial. Heating to 40 °C (104 °F) reduces enzymes.

Many commercial beekeepers invest in heated honey storage tanks. With the constant heat the honey never gets a chance to form crystals. These tanks are always kept around 125 degrees F. (More on this later when I learn more about them…)

With our small time operation with no heated tank (not yet at least) we keep all our honey in glass jars. Using glass makes it easier to heat the honey up. In previous years we kept our honey in food grade plastic containers but then it crystallized in those containers and then had to be scooped out into jars and then heated to liquefy. So now we're skipping the plastic entirely.

All family members and even a few friends save and wash all their glass pickle, relish, jam jars, etc., for us to use. We don't put all our honey in "for sale" jars until we need them. That way we don't have to buy boxes and boxes of for sale jars all at once. When ready, we heat the jars to liquefy the honey and then pour into the for sale jars as needed and label them.

[Photo - Last year's plastic pails.  We still use them but the jars are used first.]

We use a pressure cooker to heat the honey in a hot bath. This is the marketing manager's (Dad's) job. He and Mom boil water in their pressure cooker. Then they turn off the heat and set the honey jars inside the hot water. The pressure cooker has a wire base which keeps the jars from sitting directly on the metal bottom. They leave the jars for a couple hours and the heat works to slowly melt the crystals.

The key is to not let the temperature get above 40°C (104 °F). At 50 °C (122 °F) honey will caramelize.

Pasteurized honey available in grocery stores has been heated at 161 °F (71.7 °C) or higher. Cooking at this heat destroys yeast cells, reduces enzymes, darkens the colour and changes the taste and smell of the honey.

Freezing Honey:

Below 5 °C, the honey will not crystallize and the original texture and flavour are preserved indefinitely.

Honey will not freeze solid. Instead, as the temperatures become colder it becomes thicker (think of the saying like Molasses in January…). While appearing or even feeling solid, it will continue to flow at very slow rates.

My preference is to scoop the crystallized honey straight from the jar and into my hot tea. In my opinion that's the best way to melt it.

(Many thanks to those experts who contribute to Wikepedia where this info came from)

Why Does Honey Crystallize?

All honey eventually crystallizes.  The higher the glucose/fructose level in your honey (such as Aster flower honey) the faster it happens.

Here's Wikepedia's description of the properties of honey found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey

"Crystallized honey is honey in which some of the glucose content has spontaneously crystallized from solution as the monohydrate. Also called "granulated honey."

Honey that has crystallized over time (or commercially purchased crystallized) in the home can be returned to a liquid state if stirred in a container sitting in warm water at 120 °F (approx 49 °C)."

"The physical properties of honey vary, depending on water content, the type of flora used to produce it, temperature, and the proportion of the specific sugars it contains. Fresh honey is a supersaturated liquid, containing more sugar than the water can typically dissolve at ambient temperatures. At room temperature, honey is a supercooled liquid, in which the glucose will precipitate into solid granules. This forms a semisolid solution of precipitated sugars in a solution of sugars and other ingredients.

"The melting point of crystallized honey is between 40 and 50 °C (104 and 122 °F), depending on its composition. Below this temperature, honey can be either in a metastable state, meaning that it will not crystallize until a seed crystal is added, or, more often, it is in a "labile" state, being saturated with enough sugars to crystallize spontaneously.  The rate of crystallization is affected by the ratio of the main sugars, fructose to glucose, as well as the dextrin content. Temperature also affects the rate of crystallization, which is fastest between 13 and 17 °C (55 and 63 °F). Below 5 °C, the honey will not crystallize and, thus, the original texture and flavor can be preserved indefinitely.

"Since honey normally exists below its melting point, it is a supercooled liquid. At very low temperatures, honey will not freeze solid. Instead, as the temperatures become colder, the viscosity of honey increases. Like most viscous liquids, the honey will become thick and sluggish with decreasing temperature. While appearing or even feeling solid, it will continue to flow at very slow rates. Honey has a glass transition between -42 and -51 °C (-44 and -60 °F). Below this temperature, honey enters a glassy state and will become a noncrystalline amorphous solid.

"A few types of honey have unusual viscous properties. Honey from heather or manuka display thixotropic properties. These types of honey enter a gel-like state when motionless, but then liquify when stirred.

"Regardless of preservation, honey may crystallize over time. Crystallization does not affect the flavor, quality or nutritional content of the honey, though it does affect color and texture. The rate is a function of storage temperature, availability of "seed" crystals and the specific mix of sugars and trace compounds in the honey. Tupelo and acacia honeys, for example, are exceptionally slow to crystallize, while goldenrod will often crystallize still in the comb. Most honeys crystallize fastest between about 50 and 70 °F (10 and 21 °C). The crystals can be redissolved by heating the honey."

The problem with these crystals is that they aren't very pleasant on the tongue.  But enter Creamed Honey/Whipped Honey and it's another product the beekeeper can sell.

In my next post we'll explore how to Make Creamed Honey.

It's Still About Bees

I've taken a little blogging break while I work outside in the yard.  I've been raking leaves, draining and storing the garden hoses, emptying the eaves troughs of leaves and putting all my garden paraphernalia away.

[photo - yellow butterfly bush in my back yard]

I feel a rush of adrenaline as I hurry to catch up and get these outdoor tasks done.  Soon it will snow.

And before I know it it'll be spring again and I'll be so busy with the bees my backyard will again become neglected as the focus shifts back to the bees.

But did it ever actually shift away from them?  I don't think so.

They are tucked away with their warm wraps on.  I visit them still once a week.  I even made some sugar water for them since the next couple days are predicted to be 10+ degrees C so the bees will be flying.  I have two hive top feeders set up on a robbing table close by that they can go to.

At home I've surveyed my yard and gardens.  As I plan my chores and make my To Do lists and check them off it's always with a mind to get it done now in the fall or winter when it's quieter and I have time.  Because once spring comes there's no time any more.

I rake a little faster and trim the trees a little more than usual. Oh yes, I remember how busy spring can be.  Now I know where my busy adrenaline rush is coming from.  I'm still thinking about the bees.