Making creamed honey?

I did a one to ten … my mixer can hold up to 20 litres … mixed on 3 speed for 20 minutes … the honey was room temp … approx 18dg … have some pics on a face book page … harriets gourmet provisions … then placed in fridge as was suggested at Tocal … this seems to be the best as we are having 32dg days …

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My method is to mix in smooth crystallized honey and put it in the back room where the temperature in winter at my house is typically between 50 and 60 F. Some people heat it first, which I think is destructive to the flavor and odor of the honey. So I don’t heat mine.

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I stumbled across this old post and wondered if I could pick your brain a bit? I cream honey for my local Farmer’s Market and generally package it in a shallow round container. I’m intrigued by the bars, but mine never sets up that hard. Just FYI, I’m in coastal Texas so its already a million degrees so that may be why. I was hoping you could give me some direction possibly l.

Could be the seed that you use and the type of honey. Creamed Honey here sets hard, occasionally I do get a softer set creamed which we cannot use for the bars… also when we sell it at the markets on a warm day we keep it cool in an esky (cooler) and recommend that it be kept in the fridge. Do you set your creamed in the fridge?

I do cream mine in the fridge (well a makeshift cooler) and I try to keep it at about 50 degrees. It usually takes 15 or so days. Would you kind sharing the type of seed you use. I am so intrigued by shooting for a harder set. I’ve yet to visit a market or any honey/ beekeeper event in Texas with it. You are welcome to email me if youd rather not share in am open forum: Kirista@groove3.com

Hi @Kirista, I started out a few years back with someone elses creamed honey, it was a eucalyptus based honey… I bought a quite a few different types before deciding to start with this one. I was looking for a fine texture and a firm set. I have heard that you can create your own by letting different honey’s crystallise, then selecting the one with the finer crystal then grinding it to break the crystal down and using as a seed on a small scale and building it up.
Its not likely that you will find much eucalyptus honey in Texas, though California may have some.

Would you mind sharing what size molds you use for these?

Hi, I’m new to Creaming Honey, I used seed Honey at 10:1 ratio, I slightly heated the raw honey and checked for crystals, mixed in the seed, I now find it is mostly smooth but has some large crystals through some of the containers, luckily I only did a test run of 5litres first.
My question, is there a way to fix this problem? If so was the likely problem possible side crystals that got scraped into the batch?
Thanks for any help.

Hi @Mark_Langkilde,

I think you may have answered part of your question right there… crystal contamination

I think the best course of action would be to place the creamed honey in a warmer at a low temperature and stir gently until all the crystals have dissolved. There might be some tasting required along the way :laughing: then let it completely cool and then introduce a new seed.

sometimes the large crystal settle at the bottom so you may have had some in there that you didn’t notice. The trick is to start with honey that has no crystals in it. If you are using candied honey you can heat it - then strain it before adding your seed to make sure there are no large crystals.

You can make a seed by taking any candied honey and grinding it in a mortar and pestle for ages and ages until you can’t sense any crystals on your tongue to the taste.

then to make it set hard you need to keep it around 14c for around 5 to 10 days.

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We sell a lot of creamed honey…almost as much as liquid honey…but I think in this part of the world naturally granulated honey is a sign of honey that has not been over-processed. There is only one floral type that stays in the natural liquid form and that is from the fireweed plant…but nectar from this source is almost non-existent. Naturally granulated honey often becomes rock-hard and our customers seem to like the creamed version…but the more discerning consumers shy away from creamed honey with large crystals requesting a smoother, velvety product.

To consistently arrive at a fine granulated honey is problematic… as mentioned before…seed eventually gets contaminated with coarser sized crystals.

We have found that in our produced honey…even after heating to 40C-45C, some coarse crystals remain and once formed these crystals remain in the honey even when an extra 20 degrees of heat is applied. So we address this issue by filtering the honey…with a 400 micron filter…before adding the seed.

Here is a photo showing those larger crystals we routinely filter out of a 5 gal pail:

You just have to see what works in your specific circumstances…we have canola within flying distance of our beehouses…so that is where the coarse crystal could be coming from. But it could be from a dandelion honey film left on the extracted frames from the previous year. Dandelion honey has the most coarse texture of all our granulated honeys.

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This can be purchased at my local bee supply company:

I swear it is “icing sugar”…but it works very well.

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wow- that’s interesting- icing sugar as the seed. never heard that before. Is it at all possible it could be powdered honey?

I might make an experiment and see what icing sugar as a seed does. It’s kind of cheating though right?

we also do the same if the honey has candied and filter it before adding our seed.

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What proportion of “starter” to honey? I might try it on a spare jar over winter. :wink:

I imagine the same as regular honey seed- which people often put at %10. But you can get away with %5 or even less, assuming you mix it very well. If I was using icing sugar I wouldn’t want my honey to be 10% icing sugar (side note: isn’t that how they make fondant bee feed and queen cage candy plugs?)

I use a good quality kitchen mixmaster to whip the seed into the honey. If I am making a 3okg bucket- first I mix the seed into about 5 kilos of honey with he mixmaster- then combine that in a bucket with the rest of the honey. The end result is very pale creamed honey where you cannot sense any crystal at all on the tongue. Perfecto.

perhaps you could use 10% icing sugar to make one very small batch of creamed honey- then use that batch as your seed to make a much larger batch thereby totally diluting the icing sugar content.

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If it was icing sugar wouldn’t it then be adulterated honey if used?

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Very possible Jack. Yesterday I made up a new batch of seed honey using the above product as this should do me until next spring. Today I mixed up some filtered honey with the icing sugar to see if it works the same way…it should but I want to look at both the “Premium Creamed Honey Starter” and an icing sugar sample under a microscope to see if there is a noticeable difference between crystal sizes. I’ve also got a filtered honey “control” sample that will granulate back to it’s original state over time…no granulating agent at all…will report back in a couple of weeks.

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I would think under 5% would give you all the crystal nuclei you need…so something like a tsp/1lb jar.

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