I haven’t had clover honey in years, bland stuff that it is. Rewarewa is our honey of choice. Manuka’s good too.
Clover, wildflower, orange blossom, rosemary, thyme… different color, different texture, different solidification temperature.
My favorite is orange blossom, which is very light in color (closer to bright yellow than to brown), quite strong in taste and solidifies very easily.
I buy a local honey from my local farmer’s market, and I think that it’s more flavorful than the stuff that I get at the regular grocery store. I can’t eat much honey (or any sugar) at a time, so if I’m gonna eat it, I want as much flavor as possible. If I knew a local beekeeper, I’d probably buy the honey (and possibly some beeswax) from him/her.
And there’s nothing quite like a nice hot cup of tea that’s been sweetened with honey. Mmm mmm MMM!
Nero Wolfe favored, I believe, thyme honey imported from Greece. And Fritz would let Archie know if the supply was running low, so that Archie and Fritz would have to eat a domestic honey and save the good stuff for Da Boss.
I’m very interested in apiary, though I’d never keep bees myself. I’m allergic to their stings, and I really don’t think that being a beekeeper who is allergic to bee stings is a good long term plan.
I remember being at a craft festival of some sort where one of the booths was a honey-and-honey-products vendor. They were having honey tastings! A dozen different types, handed out on tiny spoons, with descriptions reading like a wine list. I was stunned to taste just how different all the types were, and since then I seek out the good stuff when I can. I still use the honey-bear for baking or cooking, but if it’s going in tea or on toast, I find something fun at the farmer’s market.
Is it true that honey doesn’t spoil? I bought a very large jar of it a few years ago, intending to make some mead but never got around to it. The jar is still sealed; you think the honey is still good?
Common mistake. He meant to say it has a certain je ne sais rien.
:eek:
Mental note. Never kiss,share a drink, perform CPR with Rigamarole.
You don’t know where those lips have been. 
Yes. Between it’s low water content, high acidity, and the antimicrobial properties of high sugar content, Honey basically can’t spoil. You can eat honey that’s 100 years old. It might be discolored or crystalized but it’s not dangerous*. In a few instances archaeologists have tasted 2,000 year old honey with no ill effect.
*note that ALL honey can contain botulism spores which are not dangerous to adults with normal immune systems but it should not ever be given to babies or anyone who is immune-compromised.
It can spoil, if you leave it open it can eventually ferment after absorbing moisture from the air. Sealed though, it can last decades or even centuries. If there’s any crystallization, you can heat it for a short time in the microwave (make sure your container is microwave safe) and stir it up and it’s good as new.
One of my daughter’s favorite bedtimes stories is about the time our family went to Egypt, got on camels, followed a treasure map deep into the desert, activated an enormous stone statue of a puppy so it jumped up and ran around, revealing a staircase into a tomb, and robbed the tomb of various jars of honey (chocolate honey, strawberry honey, etc.), and it was still good. So yeah, it definitely lasts forever!
What’s weird is that there’s a variety of dark honey that I like, and I thought it was clover honey, and it tastes much stronger to me than other varietes such as tupelo and sourwood (two Appalachian favorites). Am I mistaken about the honey’s provenance, or does clover really tend to be darker than other varieties? If it does, maybe I just have a weird idea about what constitutes a stronger flavor.
It varies quite a bit from batch to batch, depending on the honey and variables in the fermentation. I like variety (and am inclined to be lazy), so I don’t try to maintain fine control of the fermentation environment. Clean equipment, honey, spring water, yeast, and miscellaneous additives go in, and I bottle whatever comes out when it’s done. Sometimes it’s light and sweet, which I like, and sometimes it’s desert dry and highly potent…which I also like. If it comes out with an unpleasant flavor, I experiment with flavor additives and aging to see if I can mellow it–I’ve had meads that were downright nasty when freshly bottled mature into deliciousness over a couple of years.
We picked up some black muscat grape honey from Bob the Bee guy in Fresno for our buddy Max to turn into mead [and some plain orange blossom from what he said was a cara cara orange field] That will ferment out to make a mead that is very reminiscent of sherry. Not sure which yeast he uses for it.
I have a tiny jar of Alaskan fireweed honey that is very interesting, and sorghum, which is a bit strong tasting. The buckwheat honey is sort of nice, I like a tiny drizzle on my pancakes.
Now go to try REAL maple syrup. Your mind will be blown!
But it was such a perfect Freudian slip!
I’m intrigued. I’ve never liked the taste of honey and lately have been buying agave syrup because of it’s brighter flavor. We don’t have Trader Joe’s here. Suggest me some brands I can buy that will give me the Authentic Honey Experience. We do have Whole Foods and an excellent gourmet grocery store. What do I look for on the label?
Clover honey is generally on the lighter side of honeys. If it was a really dark honey with a strong flavor, maybe it was buckwheat honey? That one gets molasses-like dark.
If you don’t like regular clover/wildflower honey because of the honey taste, you probably won’t like most of the stronger flavored honeys either. You might just not like honey! But you might want to try orange blossom honey. It has a very bright, mild flavor and it’s usually pretty easy to find.
We kept bees when I was growing up and some of the great joys of my childhood was the just barely filtered(cheesecloth, not a fine filter) fresh honey. About all that had been strained out of it was the wax from the comb caps. Man I miss those days and if we lived in a slightly more rural area I’d definitely get a hive. Honeybees are awesome.
We’d always beg dad to break off a bit of comb for us to eat, but he almost never would. He’d let us chew on the wax from the caps, which was like a super sweet natural chewing gum. Once I remember he screwed up and broke a comb when cutting off the caps and it was like Christmas.
If you have a local beekeepers association(lots of areas do) you may want to approach them for local honey and to see if you can get some of the specialty honeys through them. It really depends on what your area grows. Commercial beekeepers have a symbiotic relationship with commercial farmers and they take several hives out into the middle of a farmer’s fields and set them up there to pollinate the crops, then they come back at harvest time for that particular crop, move the bees to another field, which may have different crops, and basically keep rotating them throughout the growing season(s). So honey from the same hive may be from different plants throughout the year. They’re also not keen on random people coming up to them to try samples. They sell to commercial channels and have to keep the honey clean and pure. Hobby and specialist beekeepers will be your best bet to get a variety of tasty samples.
Enjoy,
Steven
!!! Honey should never be given to babies?! Never heard that before!
I made a great dry, sparkling mead several years ago. It was like a fairly dry white sparkling wine with a distinct floral aftertaste - I used a combination of mostly wildflower honey, with some other fruit varietal honeys mixed in. Fabulous stuff.