Every so often someone brings a jar back to me, slightly embarrassed, and says it’s “gone off”. It’s gone solid, or cloudy, or there are white streaks down the inside of the glass.
Nothing’s wrong with it. If anything, it’s a good sign.
Real honey sets
Honey is mostly two sugars, glucose and fructose, packed into far less water than they’d normally dissolve in. That makes it unstable. Over time the glucose starts to come out of solution and form crystals. That’s granulation, and almost all real honey does it eventually.
How fast depends on where the bees have been. Honey with a lot of glucose sets quickly. Oilseed rape honey can set in the comb if you don’t get it off the hive in time. Ivy honey in autumn sets rock hard. Other honeys with more fructose can stay runny for a year or more.
So if your local honey has set and the supermarket jar in the cupboard hasn’t, that tells you something. Heavily processed honey has been heated and finely filtered, which removes the tiny particles that crystals form around. It’ll stay runny on the shelf for a long time. That isn’t the same as being better.
Temperature makes a difference
Honey sets fastest when it’s cool but not cold, somewhere in the low to mid teens. That’s a typical British pantry or a garage shelf in autumn. Warm kitchens slow it down. Very cold fridges slow it down too, though they make honey stiff and harder to spoon.
Store it at room temperature with the lid on tight. Honey pulls moisture out of the air, and wet honey can ferment.
What are the white streaks?
That’s called frosting. As honey sets, it shrinks very slightly, and tiny air gaps form against the glass. It looks like mould or sugar spilling down the inside of the jar, but it’s harmless. Some beekeepers worry customers will think there’s something wrong, so plenty of commercial honey is processed to avoid it. I’d rather sell you honey that behaves like honey.
How to make it runny again
Stand the jar in a bowl of warm water, not boiling, and leave it for a while. Give it a stir now and again. It’ll come back to liquid gently.
Please don’t microwave it. Hot spots form quickly, and overheating honey spoils its flavour and breaks down some of the delicate compounds that make it worth buying in the first place.
Or just enjoy it set
Plenty of people prefer it. Set honey doesn’t drip down your arm, it doesn’t slide off toast and it spreads like butter. In fact, we make our soft set honey on purpose by controlling how it crystallises, so the crystals are fine and smooth instead of coarse and gritty. If you want to know how, have a read of How is soft set honey made?
So next time a jar goes solid, don’t throw it away. It’s just honey being honey.
You can find our current honeys in the online shop.