Creamed Honey

As an alternative to liquid honey, techniques have been developed to guide the natural crystallization of honey towards completely crystallized, stable and homogeneous end products with a pleasant appearance, creamy consistency and good reception by most consumers. The advantage of this method is that it does not require any treatment which would alter by any means the fragile and beneficial characteristics of the honey. In addition, these methods are also well suited for small scale production and become more complicated only with an increase in quantity.

The basic principle consists of accelerating the natural tendency to crystallize by the addition of a small quantity of already crystallized honey. This method can be used with all honeys which show a tendency to crystallize either rapidly, slowly or incompletely. In the most simple method, liquid honey (naturally liquid or liquefied) is mixed with completely crystallized honey, preferably containing very fine crystals, at a ratio of 9 to 1. The mixture should be warmed to only 24 to 28⁰C in order to allow easier mixing and to ensure that none of the crystals are melting. No air bubbles should be included during this mixing. Prior to bottling, the honey is left to settle for a few hours to allow any air bubbles to escape. After bottling, the containers are kept as close to 14⁰C as possible. Depending on the moisture content, crystallization is complete in about 10-14 days and a fine crystal honey of more or less solid consistency is obtained.

The major inconvenience of this method is the excessive hardness reached by low moisture honeys due to the formation of transversal crystals, special agglomerations. To avoid such occurrences, potentially unpleasant for the consumer, a method has to be chosen which allows the separation of each individual crystal and which thus gives the honey a creamy consistency. One aesthetic problem with this type of preparation is the formation of whitish blooms on the surface and inside enclosed air bubbles, due to the surface evaporation of water and drying of glucose crystals.

One method of softening this crystallized honey consists of two distinct phases. In the first phase the guided crystallization is conducted as described previously. However, the honey (seeded with fine crystals) is left to crystallize for approximately 10 days in larger containers (25 to 300 kg) at a temperature of 14⁰C. Instead of bottling, the containers are then placed into a warm room at 28 to 30⁰C until the honey has become a little softer. During this second phase, with the honey always below its melting point, a homogenizer or mixer is introduced into the softened honey in order to break up the crystals (Gonnet, 1985 and 1986). Once stirred, it can be bottled. Alternatively, even the simple warming in the heating room and subsequent bottling will give satisfactory results, since even this small movement of the softened honey will break up the crystals. The critical point to watch is the temperature during softening and stirring, which should always remain below 28⁰C. If the crystals start melting the whole process will fail.

In another method, the seeded honey is stirred at a temperature at which the crystals readily grow (near 20⁰C). The same water-jacketed vats for heating honey can be used cooling with cold water. Agitation accelerates crystal formation considerably and helps formation of smaller crystals. After two to three days, crystallization is complete and honey can be bottled, possibly raising the temperature a few degrees to ease the flow.

The difficulty here is to stir a cold and therefore very viscous mass of honey. This not only requires considerable mechanical force, but also carries a risk of incorporating air and creating a foam. It is therefore necessary to work with sufficiently powerful motors and a slowly rotating propeller (a few rotations per minute) which should remain immersed in the honey. In the largest industrial operations, in addition to the standard mixing devices, a continuous cooling and scraping system is employed for homogenization. For small quantities not exceeding 100 kg at a time, it is possible to do everything manually and stir once or twice a day with a long wooden paddle.

Creamed honeys, produced by one of the last two processes, will always have a creamy consistency more or less fluid, depending on the water content. The main disadvantage of these preparations is their instability at warm temperatures. If stored at temperatures above 20 ⁰C for many months the crystals tend to precipitate on the bottom of containers leaving a more or less thick, liquid layer at the surface. This separation of liquid and crystalline phases (or partial reliquefaction) is more rapid in honeys with a higher moisture content and at temperatures close to or above 25 °C. In temperate climates with honeys averaging less than 18% moisture and low storage temperatures (favouring crystallization) guided crystallization appears a very advantageous and profitable process, as the profusion of the Dyce process in Canada indicates (Dyce, 1975).

A problem common to all these processes is the choice of seed honey, which has to have very fine crystals itself. Some honeys naturally form very small crystals. However, if no such honey is available, a normal, crystallized honey can be milled by passing it through a meat grinder or grinding it with a pestle and mortar to reduce the size of the crystals. If creamed honeys can be found (for example in a shop) they can be used as a starter. Small quantities are mixed with liquid honey and left to crystallize for ten days at 14⁰C with occasional stirring. This is then used as seed for a larger batch, always mixing seed honey with liquid honey at the ratio of 1:9 i.e. 1 kg of seed honey to 9 kg of liquid honey. This process can be repeated until the final, desired batch size is reached. When bottling, sufficient crystallized honey should be retained to seed the next batch.

For the manipulation of cold and therefore very viscous honey, the mixer, pump and bottling machine have to be very strong. The facilities and structures necessary for cooling during processing and storage are expensive. Smaller scale manual operations do not have these difficulties and can produce an attractive product cheaply and without expensive equipment, if ambient temperatures are not too high. Lastly, if the honey to be processed has a high moisture content and there is a possibility of fermentation, it should be pasteurized at 65 ⁰C for 5 to 10 minutes before crystallization. In this case, the seed honey has to be free of yeasts.