Hi Tim, I made a honey press, which needs some modifications. So I put that aside for the time being.
What I do is warm the honey (with comb & scrapings in a bucket) up overnight to about 50 degC. I put a regular bucket honey strainer over a bucket & work the loose honey over that with a soup spoon, which allows it to run through the strainer. I’ve been pressing the honey in comb with an old plastic potato ricer, which surprising enough pushes quite a bit out over the strainer. I’m thinking of buying a more substantial strong ss potato ricer which looks like it would do a better job. This one is used in commercial kitchens, supposedly. I’ve got 5 kilos in a bucket from my last extraction, I’ll let that build until I’m ready to crush & strain it.
It’s a unique honey in that it doesn’t level out in the bucket after it’s strained. Plus the air bubbles don’t rise to the top. The regular honey strainer lets a lot of stuff like wax & bits of cocoon through, which I leave in. I think you’d have to raise the temp. too high in order to strain that out. That’s what @Dawn_SD was talking about, that my customers accept.
This photo shows a light amount scraped on one one side, while the bottom photo shows the other side of that frames scraped down to the wires. Otherwise I’d put holes in the comb.
Thanks Wilma and Jeff,
Very interesting and must be very labour intensive too.
Do you use it yourself or do you sell surplus?
Does it have a distinctive or strong taste?
You’re welcome Tim, it has a beautiful distinctive taste. You can smell it as soon as you uncap the first frame. I sell it & keep the dregs for us. When I say “dregs”. What I can’t squeeze out with the new potato ricer, after it arrives, I’ll warm the wax in the microwave to separate the rest. We’ll use that for ourselves. That’s normally the way with primary producers.
This new potato ricer should do the job because it weighs 1.25 kilos, while the others only weigh 5-700 grams. Plus they claim with a little extra effort, you can push a raw potato through. All I want to do is easily push honey out of comb.
I’m hearing you. I initially got hives so we could produce our own honey. The hobby grew and now we only get what I’m not happy to sell. I call it the “seconds”.
Hopefully that new ricer makes the job a bit easier for you.
Thanks Tim, the old one is a plastic Metaltex brand. It did a good job for a few years making fish stock & pineapple skin drink, just to mention a couple of uses for it. Oddly enough, we didn’t really use it as a potato ricer. However the inner tube doesn’t lock in anymore. I couldn’t break it, no matter how hard I squeezed on it.
Jeff, would you mind posting a pic of your new ricer if you have a chance? I extract from rooftop comb and other comb too wavy to fit into boxes on occasion, by the crush and strain method.
I’m pretty sure it will do the job.
Because it weighs over a kilo, I’m hoping it’ll be strong enough so I’ll be able extend the handles to get extra leverage, if needed.
It’s a Vogue heavy duty potato ricer.
The potato ricer arrived yesterday, so we cooked up a pot of sweet potatoes. It didn’t perform very well there. I thought we’ll give it a go with the jellybush honey, the prime reason for the purchase. It worked better & easier than the other one, however it leaves a lot of honey in the comb.
As you can see, it’s a large machine, which probably works against it because there are more square inches to press on whatever you want to push through. Therefore there is less psi force being administered on the item, if that makes any sense. Which explains why it didn’t do well on the sweet potatoes. To be fair, I did fill the hopper up, plus I was trying to squeeze the stringy bits & skin out, which I finished off with the old one. Incidentally I finally broke it’s handle today. The new one is hard on the hands, hence the tea towel. So I’ll fix that up.
