This delicious, golden, syrupy sweetener has been used as food and medicine in cultures around the world since it was first foraged more than 8,000 years ago. Today, honey is harvested worldwide by big corporations, your neighbors, and countless specialty producers. It can sweeten your tea, enhance both the flavor and consistency of your barbecue sauce, and bring out nuances in a hunk of blue cheese.
Most of us are familiar with the bear-shaped jars of honey, and you might even have one in your pantry right now. But there’s so much more to honey than that simple, sweet syrup. At its best, honey contains nuanced aromas and flavors. It can taste floral, bitter, acidic, sweet, and even have notes of menthol or tobacco. Like wine, olive oil, and oysters, honey’s flavor and aroma are impacted by its terroir. You get very different results based on where the honeybees live and work, including the honeybees’ diet, the time of the year the honey is harvested, and how it’s processed. Honey ranges in color from very pale yellow to dark amber. It can be thin and liquidy, thick and creamy, dense and viscous, or anywhere in between.
The bees deposit the nectar into the hive’s honeycomb and use their wings to rapidly fan the honey until enough water has evaporated. During this process, the nectar transforms from a solution containing 80 percent water to honey, which contains 18 percent water or less. Once the honey has sufficiently dehydrated, the bees cap the honeycomb with beeswax, creating an airtight seal. This transformation results in the thick, luscious honey we know and love. The beekeepers leave the honey to ripen and mature, and eventually break the beeswax coating to release the honey from the honeycombs.
Another processing decision is whether or not to heat the honey. High-heat processing kills any yeast that could cause off-flavors or fermentation, makes it easier to finely filter the honey, and dissolves any crystals, ensuring that honey stays liquid longer. But high-heat processing changes a honey’s aroma and flavor. “Honey heating entails a progressive browning and a more or less obvious loss of volatile substances that characterize the aroma,” writes Ettore Baglio in Chemistry and Technology of Honey Production (). Plus, high-heat processing reduces honey’s viscosity, thereby making it more runny.
Honey that has been filtered and/or heated will add requisite sweetness to tea or toast, but critics say it lacks the characteristics that make honey special, such as nuanced flavor, complex aroma, and viscous texture. Companies that don’t filter or high-heat process their honey typically note on the bottles that it’s unfiltered and/or raw. If honey is superclear, without impurities or imperfections, it’s likely been filtered at least once, and there’s a chance it’s been heated too.
Monofloral honey is made when honeybees eat nectar from the same primary floral source; it typically contains between 20 and 60 percent nectar from that flower. Beekeepers can’t control bees’ flight patterns, but they can introduce them to environments when a specific flower is in bloom. To make “pure monofloral honey,” explained Francesca Paternoster, beekeeper and monofloral honey producer for Mieli Thun, “we look for specially selected, uncontaminated locations where we bring our bees in the peak blooming periods.” In the United States, there are more than 300 unique types of monofloral honey from different floral sources, according to the National Honey Board, and there are many more around the world. The flavors and colors of monofloral honeys can vary from season to season and year to year based on changes in environmental factors such as climate and rainfall. Honey harvested in the spring tends to be light in color and more delicate in flavor, while honey harvested in the fall is often dark and more robust, explained Mary Duane, president of the Massachusetts Beekeepers Association.
Adulterated honey is honey to which another sweetener, such as corn syrup, has been added. Companies do this in order to cut costs and stretch their supply and also because the addition of corn syrup helps prevent crystallization. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has guidelines to clarify honey labeling so that consumers can make informed shopping decisions. A food cannot be labeled as simply “honey” if it contains another sweetener. If a honey contains corn syrup, it legally must be labeled as a “blend of honey and corn syrup.” If it contains more corn syrup than honey, it must be labeled “a blend of corn syrup and honey.” There are several home tests that purport to reveal whether honey is adulterated or not. However, the National Honey Board insists that the only way to know for sure is to test the honey in a lab.
The monofloral honeys, on the other hand, were a revelation, with complex flavor profiles determined by the flowers the bees visited. Honey made from the nectar of small meadowfoam flowers found near vernal pools in the Pacific Northwest, for example, had notes of “marshmallow” and “vanilla.” Honey made from tupelo trees that grow in the marshy environment on the border of Florida and Georgia was “earthy,” “musty,” “like wet wood or moss,” with subtleties of “citrus.” And honey made from Italian chestnut trees tasted “intense,” and “complex,” with “bitter,” “medicinal” notes.
Curious how they would perform in recipes, we baked Honey Cake with three types of honey—one top-selling blended honey, one monofloral acacia honey, and one creamed honey made primarily from clover and alfalfa. While the special flavor nuances of the acacia and creamed honeys were apparent to and very appreciated by some tasters, all of the cakes we made with the three types of honey were sweet and tender. For that reason, we think a majority of honeys we tasted, including less-expensive blended honeys, will work well when baking.
Most honey will crystallize over time. That’s no reason to throw it out—it hasn’t gone bad. The easiest option is simply to enjoy the crystallized honey without returning it to its liquid state; it’s easy to spread without dripping and it melts quickly when stirred into hot drinks. However, if you would prefer to bring your honey back to liquid, Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, recommends setting the jar of honey in warm water until it liquifies. Avoid using the microwave to soften or reliquify your honey as many microwaves don’t heat evenly, so parts of the honey can boil or scorch. To limit crystallization from the start, keep your honey jar tightly sealed, because evaporation leads to crystallization. And always use a clean spoon or knife to get honey out of the jar, because any crumbs or water droplets that get in the jar will cause the honey to crystallize faster.
Native to New Zealand and Australia, mānuka honey has been used for thousands of years for medicinal purposes. The tea tree or mānuka bush (Leptospermum scoparium), from which mānuka honey’s nectar comes, “is known to have antimicrobial, antifungal, and antibacterial benefits,” according to The Honey Connoisseur (). It’s only in bloom for two to six weeks a year. In New Zealand, where a majority of mānuka honey is harvested, mānuka honey must undergo extensive testing and meet strict regulations of the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) before being authenticated and exported. The MPI tests for how much pollen comes from the tea tree, as well as the levels of antibacterial and antimicrobial properties present in the honey. Between the healing properties, limited supply, and strict regulations, it’s no wonder mānuka honey is more expensive than other honeys.
Avoid giving honey to babies under the age of 12 months as they are sensitive to a toxic bacteria called Clostridium botulinum, which can cause infant botulism, a rare, serious condition. Please consult with your pediatrician about any concerns you may have.
How can we differentiate 100% pure honey and adulterated honey without sending samples to the food laboratories for expensive authenticity tests and analyses?
There is a rising number of visitors to Benefits of Honey writing to me and asking this question. Unfortunately, I don’t really have a clear answer to this, but would like to share my experience and thoughts about this issue from a honey consumer perspective.
The term “adulterated honey” implies that the honey has been added glucose, dextrose, molasses, corn syrup, sugar syrup, invert sugar, flour, starch, or any other similar product, other than the floral nectar gathered, processed, and stored in the comb by honey bees. Legal standards and requirements for foods, including honey quality, and tests for honey adulteration vary widely amongst countries and some may not meet the wish of every consumer around the world.
Personally, when selecting honey in the shop, I think it’s almost impossible to tell the bad from the good by just looking at the honey content through the jar or studying its food and nutrition labels. My take is always — go for the trusted or better known brands. The best is to be able to ask the source or supplier of the honey questions about the honey origin and how the honey is harvested and processed to get an assurance on the quality. However, this is not always possible when we do not have direct access to bee farms and beekeepers.
Link to Jiwei
For commercial honey, we all know that a “pure honey” label doesn’t guarantee at all that it is not diluted with water and further sweetened with corn syrup; it just promises that there is real pure honey inside, with no suggestion of its amount. The law does not require a “pure honey” label to say how much pure honey is in the bottle (National Honey Board, Honey Labeling).
Also, prices are not always a good indication of quality honey. In food fraud cases, which happen a lot with Chinese honey, manufacturers can mix different honey floral blends and sell it as more expensive varieties such as Manuka honey. And so-called “local honey” may not be locally produced and processed local honey but cheap, low quality honey imported from other countries and then bottled and distributed locally.
A common misconception is that granulated or crystallized honey is proof of adulteration with sugar water. The truth is honey is a supersaturated sugar solution and can granulate whether or not it has been adulterated, so crystallization is normal, especially in temperate climates. Furthermore, some honey from certain floral sources is especially prone to crystallization.
Buying honey in the comb is one way to assure ourselves of a quality product. Comb honey is sealed in the hive by the bees; therefore consumers can be confident that the honey has not been adulterated with sugar water. However, to boost honey production, some beekeepers feed their bees with sugar syrup so that the bees can convert the syrup to “honey”. Do such practices have any implications on why some honey appears to be very clear and runny, just like syrup?
Some of my web visitors strongly believe and teach that ants don’t fancy pure honey and will not hover around it. It’s hard to understand or believe this as there seems to be no reason why ants should favor processed sugar over honey and ants may not always be “available” at all places for a honey assessment (“no ants observed” may not necessarily mean pure honey). The reason why a sweet liquid is more attractive than another for the ants could also be due to other factors such as liquid density, flavors which vary depending on the floral types.
Another test that is commonly discussed over the internet is the flame test which involves lighting up a cotton bud dipped into the honey with a match-stick flame. It’s believed that the honey will burn if it’s pure. I have tried this method many times using different types of honey, some of which I was very sure they’re pure honey (e.g. honeycomb honey), but the result I got was never consistent, and it seemed to depend very much on how much honey was dipped and how long the honey was exposed to the flame.
There’s another simple way which I have tried to verify the purity of honey: Observe how liquid honey comes down into a glass of water. It is believed that pure honey does not immediately dissolve in water; it takes a bit of effort to stir it in the water to dissolve the lumpy bits, whereas honey adulterated with sugar tends to dissolve easily in a jiggery when it is dropped into the water.
However, test result is sometimes not that clear because different honey varieties have different viscosity, some are denser and thicker than others, for instance, obviously honey in cream form, even if it’s adulterated with other substance, will not dissolve as easy as liquid honey in water.
It is suggested that people who are used to tasting honey may be easier to detect any added sugar. But frankly, because there are just too many floral varieties and blends, and the amount of adulteration may not be sufficient to affect the taste and aroma of the honey, even though I frequently take honey, I am still not 100% certain about my suspicion sometimes.
Hence, all the tests discussed above are not foolproof. It’s hard to be really absolutely sure about honey authenticity, unless from home you can use a refractometer to check the moisture content (Wikipedia) or perform scientific laboratory tests like spectroscopy, a method that uses the principle of interaction of light with mater to differentiate substances or conduct carbon isotope ratios analysis to determine if sugars were added to the honey (don’t bother if these jargons sound totally bizarre; as a consumer, I am not familiar with them either).
Nevertheless, from all the verification ways that are discussed above (labels, pouring, dissolving honey, etc.) if you have reasons to suspect that the honey is diluted and corn syrup has been added, my stance is – stay away from those brands. Better to err on the side of caution than to be sorry…well, you most probably won’t fall sick by taking the adulterated honey, but you know adulteration with cheaper sugars brings down the natural value of the honey and this doesn’t help in justifying for the amount of money you pay.
And meanwhile, if any of you, honey lovers, honey connoisseurs, beekeepers, or anyone has a reliable method to test pure honey from home (without the use of industrial chemicals), why not just share with us by posting it via the Just Share & Ask Page!
1. Does everyone have the same definition and expectations of pure honey? Find out in: “What is Pure Honey? (1-Question Survey)”.
2. What is good quality honey? Here are several factors for consideration: “What’s Considered Good Quality Honey”.
3. This bubbling test has been suggested by many honey aficionados and beekeepers, so let us see how convincing the results are: Test for Real Honey – Bubbling Test.
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