I was permanently banned from the Reddit sub without recourse for posting this despite not breaking any rules. I’m slowly making the migration over thanks to such encouragement.
I was permanently banned from the Reddit sub without recourse for posting this despite not breaking any rules. I’m slowly making the migration over thanks to such encouragement.
Not only does honey crystallise, depending on what’s in there it’s solid by default. I grew up on rapeseed honey and it has a very firm texture, holding its own weight. Honey coming out of our forests, by contrast, is so fluid that spooning it is an exercise in frustration, it wants to be poured. If you have hives standing at the border between a forest and a rapeseed field, you get something in between.
If you ever buy honey in Germany, look for these glasses. They’re from the beekeeper’s association, anything in it will be unadulterated and unblended. Or, well, the only blending that’s being done is done by the bees. 5-15 Euro for a glass, depending mostly on type of honey (some aren’t exactly easy to harvest and process, e.g. heather honey is notorious) and whether you buy directly from the beekeeper.
And return the glass. There not being any deposit on it doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t like to have it back.
By contrast, throwing some invertase at sugar to split the saccharose into glucose-fructose syrup it costs practically nothing which is how you get prices for “honey” that match those of crystal sugar. Probably even worse in the US where sugar syrups don’t start out as saccharose but maize starch.
Yep, my uncle has a few hives in his garden and he lives in an area where rapeseed is grown for oil production, during the season the honey he gets is 99% rapeseed and extremely firm and white. Texture and looks remind me more of lard than what is commonly expected from honey.
Tasty
Yes, I would have to heat one up, but I’m currently eating the other one anyway.
There are some interesting varieties.
That doesn’t even cover a fraction of what’s available. You pretty much need to take the number of beekepers and multiply it with the amount of time they say “it makes sense right now to put the hives a bit further apart, have them harvest different things”, multiplied by a heavy seasonal factor. Long story short if it grows in Germany then you can find it in a jar.
That really, really firm and white rapeseed honey that I know from my childhood has actually gotten quire rare, farmers just aren’t growing as much of it any more so it’s rare that you get a jar that is almost pure rapeseed, even if it is (rightly) labelled “rapeseed” because the bees were sitting squat in the middle of rapeseed fields. Things change all the time, the labels are fuzzy and approximate, you never really know what you’re getting, and that’s exactly what’s great about it.
Oh, and side note: No, putting honey in coffee is not a no-go. It depends on the honey, some work, some don’t, some only work with some coffees, some with others. Raw cane sugar is always a safe bet, never has a touch of caramel hurt coffee.
I was only referring to the range on offer. I am aware that this is only a fraction.
You have left out one crucial factor that beekeepers have to reckon with at all times. Bee mortality, which is also a major problem.