HOW TO: Make soft set honey from OSR

[RoseCottage]

I have seen mention of people extracting OSR straight to the jar. I thought it may be useful to remind some of how to easily work with their OSR crop to make a lovely soft set honey.

OSR granulates quickly and with large sugar crystals. If not handled properly this leads to an almost unusable crop of honey.

Please don't bottle it straight after extraction, it will just set hard in your jars.

Extract it into food grade buckets and let it set rock hard, about 4-6 weeks in time. Once that is done you can then go about making some lovely soft set honey.

Our method, which works fine and is easy to follow, is:

1. Warm your rock hard honey for a few hours (the length depends on how much is in your buckets) at 40 degrees. We bought a Th ones honey warming cabinet. This is an MDF box with 2 x 40 watt light bulbs in the bottom and a small wooden rack to stand your buckets on above them.

Do not let your honey get runny, just pliable and soft.

2. Get hold of a paint mixing paddle that attaches to a power drill. Ideally this should be stainless steel. Th ones sell them but if you search eBay or Google you can find alternatives cheaper. Some non stainless steel ones can be had for 6 quid, but they must be clean, hygienic, and non of the paint covering must make it into your honey. Stainless steel is best.

3. Add some fine grained English soft set honey into the bucket. About 10% of the volume. This will act as the seed for the crystallisation process post mixing.

4. Using your powerdrill, mix the softened honey for about 5-10 minutes, and try not to introduce air into the mixing process (so keep your paddle low in the honey as much as possible).

Carry out hygienic granulation tests.

Stop mixing when you cannot feel the honey granules on your tongue.

5. Once you have mixed and creamed your honey you can bottle it.

Keep some back to act as your future crystallisation seed.

Job done.

We used this method to create 165lbs of soft set honey from last season's crop. It was easy and produced a highly desirable honey for sale.

Once in the jars it will slowly re-crystallise but only to the crystal size of the seed honey as all the large sugar crystals are broken down during the warming and mixing phases.

I hope someone finds this useful,

All the best,

Sam

 

[the naked beekeeper]

Very useful detailed instructions.

Rooftops (John) has made a video on it too: http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/video.php?do=viewdetails&videoid=64

 

[Chris B]

Step 1: "Do not let your honey get runny, just pliable and soft".

I would give the opposite advice. To guarantee the large crystals don't influence the final set you need to totally melt your bulk honey. However, if you don't you may get lucky and still get a good result if the rape honey has aged a bit because the sugar composition will have changed due to enzyme activity, making it less prone to set like rock.

 

[RoofTops]

Further to my original video I have improved my technique a bit and I suppose need to re-shoot the video some time.

The improvements are:

Heat the honey until it is completely melted and no crystals remain, allow to cool to about 35C and then warm the fine set honey also to about 35C then mix it into the liquid honey. (You can make fine set honey by grinding about a pound of coarse set honey in a pestle and mortar (a few spoonfuls at a time) and then seeding this into about 3 pounds of honey. Stick in the 'fridge for quick setting)

Stir it well in - this takes at least 5 minutes in my experience of mixing with a screw on an electric drill.

Now chill the honey in the bucket in the warming cabinet using freezer packs - unless the ambient temperature in the room is 14C or less, which is why making soft set honey is much easier in the winter.

Change the freezer packs for new ones at least once a day. I try to keep the temperature in the cabinet below 12C if at all possible.

Stir the honey every day and more than once a day if you have time until it starts to set and becomes too thick to stir. This can take from 24 hours to a week or so in my experience.

When it has set completely warm it up again to 35C and you can then bottle it. The honey may be a bit thixotropic and reluctant to flow but a quick stir with a long handled spoon will make it more liquid for a while.

Bottling already set honey seems to greately reduce the incidence of "frosting" in the jar which occurs when the honey shrinks as it sets.

Make sure you keep back some honey to act as a seed for the next batch although if you want to dedicate a single bucket to set honey just leave some in the bottom of the bucket to be the seed for next time.

 

[Adam]

OSR granulates quickly and with large sugar crystals.

Surely if it granulates quickly, it will have fine crystals? Large crystals are formed when it granulates slowly and the crystals have time to increase thus causing larger crystals. Is my understanding wrong?

I always thought people used OSR as a seed, due to it's fine crystals?

Adam

 

[DanBee]

RG - nicely described but sadly your method is flawed. As others have said, adding seed to non-liquid honey is not effective, and OSR honey has sufficiently fine natural set that it is selected as seed honey anyway.

What you are trying to describe is the Dyce method. Briefly it consists of:

Liquefy
Seed
Set
Warm
Bottle

I would suggest that one good method for soft set is agreed and then Admin is requested to edit the post (and title) down to just that. No point having a sticky 'how-to' that starts with an incorrect method

 

[Poly Hive]

I have to agree with Danbee and others.

I was taught to allow the honey to set solid. Then melt it completely, add the seed and mix thoroughly and allow to set again.

Warm and mix then bottle.

Sold tons of it: literally.

I also would prefer this thread to be amended.

PH

 

[BKF Admin]

Would a member like to re-do the original post with the changes needed and I will add it as first post.
It could always been done as a draft for members to comment on before I "sticky" it.

Mark.

 

[Jimmy]

I have successfully used a different method that has no need for a suitable seed honey. Basically you allow the OSR honey to set solid, warm it enough to allow the stirring propellor to sink down into it and then stir until it is the right consistency. It seems simpler to me which is always a bonus

Details are here on Graham Law's site:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gandboss/OldSite/BeeStuff/KissOSR/Kiss_OSR.htm

 

[RoseCottage]

ooo eerrr

Interesting set of responses.

I only described our own method that enabled us to quickly and easily create a very smooth soft set honey that has sold well.

I accept that some mistakes have occurred (i was told that OSR produced large crystals) but no-one can argue with our result. I too was also told that by creating totally runny honey had an adverse impact on the flavour (by an old timer of many years knowledge).

By all means re-edit or draft a new 'how to' but our approach is extremely simple and effective and so I was trying to be helpful. A couple of new posters to the forum stated they were bottling straight after extraction and had no idea what to do.

To beginners OSR is made out to be really hard to handle and my aim was to give simple to follow advice about a very easy way to deal with it and enjoy it,

All the best,
Sam

 

[Skyhook]

Great thread- thanks everyone. This is probably a silly question- but why can't you seed the liquid honey on extraction?

 

[psafloyd]

Also, the video says you can stir for longer if you have less than 10% seed honey. How much longer would you advise aned what should I look for?

I currently have about 3.3% for the amount I want to seed, so should I seed about a third and then take off a couple off some to seed the rest?

 

[DanBee]

why can't you seed the liquid honey on extraction?

Many unwittingly do at this time of year when there is a mix of OSR and non-OSR honey in a super.

Seeding upon extraction (intentionally) would work but you'd want to do it after filtering and settling have taken place (as per liquid bottling). Often you only realise that the honey to be seeded has a poor texture once it has granulated.

 

[chalkie]

Further to my original video I have improved my technique a bit and I suppose need to re-shoot the video some time.

The improvements are:

Heat the honey until it is completely melted and no crystals remain, allow to cool to about 35C and then warm the fine set honey also to about 35C then mix it into the liquid honey. (You can make fine set honey by grinding about a pound of coarse set honey in a pestle and mortar (a few spoonfuls at a time) and then seeding this into about 3 pounds of honey. Stick in the 'fridge for quick setting)

Stir it well in - this takes at least 5 minutes in my experience of mixing with a screw on an electric drill.

Now chill the honey in the bucket in the warming cabinet using freezer packs - unless the ambient temperature in the room is 14C or less, which is why making soft set honey is much easier in the winter.

Change the freezer packs for new ones at least once a day. I try to keep the temperature in the cabinet below 12C if at all possible.

Stir the honey every day and more than once a day if you have time until it starts to set and becomes too thick to stir. This can take from 24 hours to a week or so in my experience.

When it has set completely warm it up again to 35C and you can then bottle it. The honey may be a bit thixotropic and reluctant to flow but a quick stir with a long handled spoon will make it more liquid for a while.

Bottling already set honey seems to greately reduce the incidence of "frosting" in the jar which occurs when the honey shrinks as it sets.
Make sure you keep back some honey to act as a seed for the next batch although if you want to dedicate a single bucket to set honey just leave some in the bottom of the bucket to be the seed for next time.

After bottling the honey do you cool it again to 14c.

thanks

 

[peteinwilts]

Hi Guys

Depending on whether I can acquire a stirrer, I hope to try this over the next few days.

I am not too keen on the idea of buying in soft set honey to add to my own, and would rather create a seed. (although will look through my buckets to see if any has set naturally of the right consistency)

I note that a pestle and mortar is used for crushing the seed. I imagine that would be suitable for smaller quantity's, but for buckets, I presume it could be quite slow.

What about running it dry in a liquidiser or a grinder? If using a pestle and mortar, I presume the seed be ground down to a powder?

Cheers
Pete

 

[itma]

Pete, the 'seed' is simply well-creamed honey - not a powder but a super-smooth paste (without any 'gritty' big crystals).

The idea must be to make enough seed for a small batch, and then later to use that as the seed for a bigger batch.
Its not unknown for people to use a spoonful of bought well-creamed honey to seed a jar of their own stuff, and then to use that jar to seed a bucketful, and so on.
The initial spoonful is soon lost in dilution.
And of course, you could buy it from another local beek, rather than Tesco's Canadian supplier ...

 

[VEG]

I bought 6lb of soft set from a fellow beek. I used this to seed my first honey and then kept back 6lb to go into the next batch. If you buy some it only makes up 10% to start with.
The "seed" is a term given to the all ready soft set honey as this crystal size determines the size of the crystals in the finished product.

 

[peteinwilts]

A fellow beek did give me a jar of creamed honey which I guss I could multiply up

So, the pestle and mortar is not used??

 

[itma]

...
So, the pestle and mortar is not used??

Depends how smooth your 'seed' honey might be.
If its gritty (grainy) on the tongue, then grind it until it isn't!

 

[peteinwilts]

Thanks for the advice all! Will give it a go!