I have some traditional frames that I extracted with a centrifugal extractor and I overestimated the space inside for the honey to sit at the bottom.
The honey got stirred for a couple minutes while I went to get a bucket and I wasn’t watching.
I thought the bubbles would surface in a matter of a couple days but it has been more than a week and the honey is still fairly cloudy with microscopic bubbles.
I tried leaving the bucket outside to see if a little ambient warmth would speed it up but still quite a lot of bubbles. I used a couple pieces of plastic wrap to remove the very foamy top layer but the honey underneath is quite “milky.”
Should I just bottle it up and let it sit? I wish I had a way to apply a vacuum to the bucket…
If you are happy with the water content (i.e. it isn’t fermenting), I would just let it sit before bottling. Very low water content/viscous honey can take quite a while to settle. Sometimes a fine strainer used during bottling helps to remove some of the foam and bits of floating wax.
Of course I am assuming that you don’t have a huge area of heather or manuka near you, nor anything else that would generate thixotropic honey. If you do (I strongly believe that you don’t!), I am out of ideas!
Hi Alok, I find that bubbles in thixotropic honey wont come to the surface. Cloudy normal honey indicates to me that the honey is at the point of crystallizing. I find that honey like that blocks a fine strainer fairly quickly on account of the fine crystals.
I have a warming tank that holds 2 10L buckets. I sit the crystallized or partly crystallized buckets of honey in the water (which comes 1/2 way up the buckets), with a temp of 125F, for about 12 hours, or as long as what’s required to completely decrystallize the honey. After that, the honey flows freely through a fine strainer, leaving only bits of wax. Plus it looks amazingly clear, which is quite remarkable.
Depending on the size of your containers, 3-6 hours might be all you need to sit it for. I recently did some at 115F, however I still finished up with crystals at the bottom of the bucket. I found 125 to be perfect.
There are no sources of thixotropic honey here in central Ohio. I am told that this is mostly black locust. The other frames that I extracted at the same time had a water content of 16%. It is very viscous but not jelly-like or crystallized.
I will try a warmer (chest freezer with a space heater inside and an external temp controller, don’t call the fire marshall) at the temperatures you suggested and see how it goes.
I’ll put some of the bubbly honey in a bottle so you can see and add another picture.
Hi Alok, I’m wondering if there might be some thixotropic honey in there, for it not to go clear. If that’s the case, your friends will be all the more lucky. Some thixotropic, or Leptospermum honey is high in anti-bacterial/microbial qualities.
I’ll have to do some more research to see if there are sources of thixotropic honey… I’m in central Ohio, in USDA zone 6a - average minimum temperature -10°F (record is -22°F).
