Warming honey that is jarred & labelled

[simonforeman]

I have some jarred summer honey that was jarred and labelled. It has been left in a cold spare bedroom with no heating on. The honey is starting to crystallize.

If I warm up again in my warming cabinet, can I leave the lid on to do this?

Thanks in advance

 

[steve1958]

Yes leave the lids on, but be careful when you take them out as the lids can become loose when warmed.

 

[enrico]

Why, it doesn't have to be runny!
E

 

[Erichalfbee]

Why, it doesn't have to be runny!
E

Maybe but a lot of naturally crystallising honey is gritty and has a horrid mouth feel.

 

[simonforeman]

Thanks for the replies

 

[Millet]

Work out what you need for yourself or to sell and warm it at 65C for 1hr it will go crystal clear and give you a shelf life of around one month..i have recently done my last batch that is to be sold and it is in the airing cupboard to keep it slightly warmer than room temperature.

Before and after.

 

[The Poot in Somerset]

Why, it doesn't have to be runny!
E

I supply work colleagues and the spoon bending hard stuff is the most popular....

 

[simonforeman]

I supply work colleagues and the spoon bending hard stuff is the most popular....

This has been my first full year of selling my honey and the people who had never had spring soft set before and were slightly dubious about it have bought more and love it. There are the others that just stick to the nice runny stuff....

 

[Beersmith]

I supply work colleagues and the spoon bending hard stuff is the most popular....

Do not try to bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth... there is no spoon. Then you will see it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

 

[steve1958]

When a customer is deciding which honey to buy I sometimes get asked 'which is best"?
My reply is always influenced by what I have in stock.
People are happy to take the 'experts' advice.

 

[Curley]

Yes leave the lids on, but be careful when you take them out as the lids can become loose when warmed.

and may then leak if tipped. Careful too with loose lids having tamper seals, as retightening may damage those.
Generally i just label honey when I need it then any 'post jarring' treatment is easier.

 

[pargyle]

Work out what you need for yourself or to sell and warm it at 65C for 1hr it will go crystal clear and give you a shelf life of around one month..i have recently done my last batch that is to be sold and it is in the airing cupboard to keep it slightly warmer than room temperature.

Before and after.

This is bad advice .. You need to read Wally Shaw's excellent pamphlet on honey processing.

http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/wbka-harvesting-honey-v4-ENG.pdf

Even commercial organisations only heat honey to your suggested temperature for FIVE MINUTES.

As always .. be careful that advice you gve is good advice, there are a lot of new(ish) beekeepers that could take what you say as gospel.

The maximum temperature that you should, normally, warm honey to is 40 degrees C. It may take a little longer to liquify but it's not going to affect the honey or create HMF.

 

[drex]

HMF levels get higher, the higher the temp and the longer it is held at that temp. Heat , even for short times destroys the enzymes though.
So the shorter and lower the better.
However from " the hive and the honey bee " to attain 3mg/100 g of Hmf/honey at 60 degrees it takes 1-2.5 days but at 70 only 5-14 hours. The legal limit is 40mg/ gm, but who knows at what level the honey starts out.
I never heat above 50, and then only rarely. I prefer to store my honey in buckets until jarred. That gives me time to assess if it will naturally stay runny or will set.

 

[Nige.Coll]

It all depends on how much it has crystallized.
Leaving it on a radiator for a while can clear slightly cloudy honey.

If you wanted to make osr honey liquid and it to stay liquid then heat to 60c for 1 hour then cool rapidly, this should give a shelf life of around 8-12 months.

If you want to liquefy honey for anything else then 52c seems to be the most popular recommendation but 40c will give liquid summer honey.

Oil seed rape honey keep around 35c any higher seems to affect the colour and texture.

Seeding honey, heat honey to be seeded to 50c, heat seed honey to no more than 35c and mix. min 10% of seed to seeded.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Never needed to heat my honey to more than 35 to 40 degrees for seeding

 

[Beefriendly]

If you can get set rape honey liquid at 40C you are a better man than me. I use 50C overnight, remove scum and allow to cool to room temperature before seeding.
The technique of briefly raising the temp to 60C for an hour to prolong shelf life of runny honey has been used for donkeys years.

 

[drex]

Yep. No way can I get OSR to liquefy at 40. Even with lots of stirring, in an efficient warming cabinet. I usually use about 48.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

If you can get set rape honey liquid at 40C .

Yep. No way can I get OSR to liquefy at 40.

It'snot what I said - read Nigel's post

Seeding honey, heat honey to be seeded to 50c, heat seed honey to no more than 35c and mix. .

If I had the misfortune to have to deal with mazola honey, after heating it to whatever temperature to liquefy, I would still leave it to cool to around 35 beore seeding and I wouldn't neccessarily heat the seed all the way to 35 - just warm enough so it's stirrable and easy to blend into the main honey, then the quicker I can get it down to 15, the better

you are a better man than me.

If you say so

 

[nantmoel]

I warm mine to 40C overnight, I always jar and label all my honey in two-three batches in the summer, then I warm 50-72 jars at a time. This works for me.