Honey is normally a liquid but it's often sold as Set or Creamed Honey. This is the stuff that doesn't run, sticks to your knife and is easier to spread on your toast. It tastes the same as liquid honey, in fact it's actually the same stuff except it's physical state has been altered by encouraging it to crystallise in a controlled way. Left to it's own devices liquid honey crystallises and needs warming to melt it again. This process is called granulation. At some point in distant days of yore some bright spark who's name history seems to have forgotten discovered that if you seed liquid honey with honey that has already formed small crystals the liquid honey will form crystals the same size. I have no idea how that works, probably some complicated metallurgy stuff going on there, but work it certainly does.
As I wanted to label my honey as Produce of England I figured I'd best get some English seed honey to start the process. Turns out this is actually far easier said than done, late at night anyway, if it was daytime I could've probably just got some from another bee keeper.. anyway I tried 5 supermarkets before I was able to find any English Honey, everything on the shelves in Tesco and Sainsbury's was a blend of "EU and Non EU" Honey. It wasn't till I got to Asda that I found English Set Honey. Well done Asda for selling English Honey. But unfortunately also big black mark to Asda for sticking a Bumble Bee on the label instead of an actual Honey Bee. D'oh.
Actually in 2014 this stuff was
withdrawn from sale after some came into contact with South African Honey by accident. Having been mixed with South African honey they couldn't sell it as English that year. Oops. Red faces all round but I'm sure after a little shouting and some awkward foot shuffling they'll've tightened things up after that though.
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| English Set Honey from Asda -There's a mistake in this photo.. |
The smoothness of the set honey depends on the size of the crystals it forms, the larger crystals give a grittier feel to it, smaller crystals a smoother texture. I bought a handful of different set honeys to compare and there was quite range in crystal sizes. This English Set Honey was really smooth, which is what I'd expect given the label suggests it's a premium product.
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| Asda's English Honey meets my English Honey |
The first thing to do is add your seed honey to a bucket of liquid honey. Then stir. It's actually not easy stirring a bucket of honey for long, but not to worry technology to the rescue. A modern honey stirrer is like a 3' long blunt corkscrew made from food grade stainless steel that fits into a drill. You need to mix it evenly and avoid dragging air bubbles into the liquid.
The noise of the drill should give some indication of how much work is involved. It must've been really hard work prior to electronic shortcuts. Once mixed it looked a bit like a coffee.
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| Liquid and seed honey mixed |
Once mixed it was decanted into jars and put somewhere cool to crystallise. I opted to use my Honey Warming Cabinet. It's an insulated box after all. Obviously I didn't turn it on and loaded it up in the evening when it was cool then closing the door seemed to do the trick.
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| Everybody be cool.. |
I gave it a few weeks to crystallise probably didn't need quite as long as I gave it. With the first batch done I was able to use these to seed more buckets of honey, and rather than go to the shed I left some in the fridge to cool. I'd turned the fridge up to it's warmest setting as if it's too cold it slows crystallisation.
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| Chilling. A bit. |
I didn't set the whole honey crop as some people prefer their honey in it's natural state. I put it in three sizes of jar, 250g, 365g and 454g. 454g is the traditional Pound of honey.
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| 45 Kilos of Local Honey. |
Some readers may be wondering how it was possible for Set Honey to be made in the first place if you already need a couple of jars full to make it. There is another way. You start with some heavily granulated honey and grind it with a mortar and pestle breaking up the large sugar crystals.
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| Granulated Honey in a Mortar |
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| Same honey after some heavy grinding |
It's harder work than you'd imagine and you have to do a
very small batch at a time to get it even. I assume commercial
outfits like whoever made the Asda English Set Honey will probably have
some high tech machinery to do the job or possibly even some clever
sciencey temperature controlled set up but if you have the time you can
do it yourself. Once you've creamed a two or three jars you can use them
to seed a bucket and when that sets use it to seed more buckets. If you
store it right you should be able to use some of that next year to seed
your next crop.
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| The original granulated honey and the ground honey |
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| Ready for mixing with liquid honey |
This is actually the first way I tried to make set honey, using a heavily granulated jar I'd saved from a couple of years ago. Unfortunately I made a beginner's mistake and tried to do it in July. It was too warm and the bucket didn't crystallise as hoped. In hindsight I would've probably been okay if I'd put the bucket in the fridge.. But not to worry, if your attempt to make a set honey goes wrong all you need to do is warm it up to return it to it's liquid state and you're ready to go again.
