Ingredient: Honey
Category: Sugars & Syrups
Season: All
Honey is a sweet and viscous fluid produced by honey bees and derived from the nectar of flowers
According to the various international food regulations , "honey stipulates a pure product that does not allow for the addition of any other substance...this includes, but is not limited to, water or other sweeteners".
Honey is significantly sweeter than table sugar and has attractive chemical properties for baking. Honey has a distinctive flavour which leads some people to prefer it over sugar and other sweeteners.
Ripe honey, as removed from the hive by the beekeeper, has a long shelf life and will not ferment.
Honey is a mixture of sugars and other compounds.
With respect to carbohydrates, honey is mainly fructose (about 38.5%) and glucose (about 31.0%), making it similar to the synthetically produced inverted sugar syrup, which is approximately 47% fructose, 47% glucose and 5% sucrose. Honey's remaining carbohydrates include maltose, sucrose, and other complex carbohydrates.
Honey contains trace amounts of several vitamins and minerals.
As with all nutritive sweeteners, honey is mostly sugars and is not a significant source of vitamins or minerals.
Honey also contains tiny amounts of several compounds thought to function as antioxidants, including chrysin, pinobanksin, vitamin C, catalase, and pinocembrin.
The specific composition of any batch of honey will depend largely on the mix of flowers available to the bees that produced the honey.
Honey has a density of about 1.36 kg/litre (40% denser than water).
Typical honey analysis:
Fructose: 38.0%
Glucose: 31.0%
Sucrose: 1.0%
Water: 17.0%
Other sugars: 9.0% (maltose, melezitose)
Ash: 0.17%
Other: 3.38%
Personal preference reigns here. Heather Honeyis my favoutite, which is thick and solid in the jar, the other Scottish honeys include: Clover Honey, Blossom Honey, & Scottish Comb Honey.
Whichever, honey you prefer, it’s a store-cupboard must.
For a quick snack, spread with good butter on freshly baked bread or spoon over thick Greek yoghurt.
Other honeys:
Blended
Most commercially available honey is blended, meaning that it is a mixture of two or more honeys differing in floral source, colour, flavour, density or geographic origin.
Polyfloral
Polyfloral honey is derived from the nectar of many types of flowers.
Monofloral
Different monofloral honeys have a distinctive flavour and colour due to differences between their principal nectar sources.
Beekeepers keep monofloral beehives in an area where the bees have access to only one type of flower, because of that flower's properties (for example: Scottish Heather Honey).
In practice, because of the difficulties in containing bees, a small proportion of any honey will be from additional nectar from other flower types.
Typical examples of monofloral or varietal honeys are: “heather honey” "orange blossom", "sage", "eucalyptus", "tupelo", "manuka", "buckwheat" and, “sourwood”.
Honeydew honey
Instead of taking nectar, bees can take honeydew, the sweet secretions of aphids or other plant sap-sucking insects.
Bees collecting this resource have to be fed protein supplements, as honeydew lacks the protein-rich pollen accompaniment gathered from flowers.
Germany's Black Forest is a well-known source of honeydew-based honeys.
Honeydew honey is popular in some areas, but in many areas beekeepers have difficulty selling the stronger flavoured product.
Honeydew honey has a much larger proportion of indigestibles than light floral honeys, which can cause dysentery, resulting in the death of colonies in areas with cold winters.
Good beekeeping management requires the removal of honeydew prior to winter in colder areas.
Honey processing:
Comb honey
Sold still in the original bees' wax comb.
Comb honey was once packaged by installing a wooden framework in special honey supers, this, labour intensive method, is being replaced by plastic rings or cartridges.
With the new approach, a clear cover is usually fitted onto the cartridge after removal from the hive so customers can see the product.
Certified Organic Honey
Is quite rare to find, because most beekeepers "routinely use sulpha compounds and antibiotics to control bee diseases, carbolic acid to remove honey from the hive and calcium cyanide to kill colonies before extracting the honey, not to mention that conventional honeybees gather nectar from plants that have been sprayed with pesticides."
Raw honey
As it exists in the beehive or as obtained by extraction, settling or straining without adding heat above 120 degrees fahrenheit.
Raw honey contains some pollen and may contain small particles of wax.
Local raw honey is sought after by allergy sufferers as the pollen impurities are thought to lessen the sensitivity to hay fever.
Chunk honey
Is packed in wide mouth containers consisting of one or more pieces of comb honey surrounded by extracted liquid honey.
Strained honey
Honey, which has been passed through a mesh material to remove particulate material (pieces of wax, propolis, other defects) without removing pollen, minerals or valuable enzymes.
Preferred by the health food trade - it may have a cloudy appearance due to the included pollen, and it also tends to crystallize more quickly than ultra-filtered honey.
Ultra-filtered honey
Processed by very fine filtration under high pressure to remove all extraneous solids and pollen grains.
The process typically heats honey to 150-170 degrees to more easily pass through the fine filter.
Ultra-filtered honey is very clear and has a longer shelf life, because it crystallizes more slowly due to the high temperatures breaking down any sugar seed crystals, making it preferred by the supermarket trade. Ultra-filtration eliminates nutritionally valuable enzymes, such as diastase and invertase.
Heat-Treated honey
Heat-treatment after extraction reduces the moisture level and destroys yeast cells.
Heating liquefies crystals in the honey, too.
Heat-exposure does also result in product deterioration, as it increases the level of hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and reduces enzyme (e.g. diastase) activity.
The heat does also affect sensory qualities and reduces the freshness.
Heat processing can darken the natural honey colour (browning), too.
Ultrasonicated honey
Ultrasonication is a non-thermal processing alternative for honey.
When honey is exposed to ultrasonication, most of the yeast cells are destroyed.
Yeast cells that survive sonication generally lose their ability to grow.
This reduces the rate of honey fermentation substantially.
Ultrasonication does also eliminate existing crystals and inhibit further crystallization in honey.
Ultrasonically aided liquefaction can work at substantially lower temperatures of approx. 35 °C and can reduce liquefaction time to less than 30 seconds.
Other descriptions:
Crystallised honey
Honey in which, some of the glucose content has spontaneously crystallised from solution as the monohydrate. Also called "granulated honey."
Organic honey
Is honey produced, processed, and packaged in accordance with national regulations, and certified as such by some government body or an independent organic farming certification organization.
In the United Kingdom, the standard covers not only the origin of bees, but also the positioning of the apiaries, which must be on land that is certified as organic, and within a radius of 4 miles from the apiary site, nectar and pollen sources must consist essentially of organic crops or uncultivated areas.
Set honey
All honey will eventually set or granulate, this process can be reversed by gently warming the honey to liquefy it.
Some honeys set naturally with large granules and taste a little like granulated sugar in honey.
Others set like royal icing - very hard and unspreadable.
To overcome this problem beekeepers will mix in a small amount of fine-grained honey before it sets and then gently stir the honey to fix the setting prematurely, before it becomes hard, thereby producing a "soft set" honey.
Whipped honey:
Is honey that has been processed to control crystallisation.
Whipped honey contains a large number of small crystals in the honey.
The small crystals prevent the formation of larger crystals that can occur in unprocessed honey.
The processing also produces a honey with a smooth spread-able consistency.
Whipped honey is also called: Creamed Honey, Spun Honey, Churned Honey, Candied Honey, and Honey Fondant.
Production methods
The first method for producing whipped honey was patented by Elton J. Dyce in 1935.
In this process, raw honey is first pasteurised to kill any yeasts that may be present in the honey.
After pasteurisation, previously processed whipped honey is added to the pasteurized honey to produce a mixture of 10% whipped honey and 90% pasteurised honey.
The mixture is then allowed to rest at a controlled temperature of 57°F (14°C).
This method will produce a batch of whipped honey in about one week.
A seed batch, can be made by:
Allowing, normal honey to crystallise then crushing the crystals to the desired size.
Large scale producers; have modified this process by using paddles to stir the honey mixture, while holding the mixture at 57°F.
This reduces the time needed to several hours.
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