Honey with fruit, and honey ferments

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Add anything and it is not honey

In law, honey is the natural sweet substance honey bees make from the nectar of plants. Nothing may be added to it, no food ingredient and no additive, except other honey. 1

So honey with blackberry juice stirred in, or plums fermented in it, is not honey, however purple and however good. And the name “honey” must not be used as the name of a product that is not honey. 1 “Purple honey” is exactly the name you cannot give it.

You can still make it and sell it, as what it is: a product made with honey. The honey that goes into it must itself meet the rules for honey. 1

You become a food business

Selling small amounts of your own honey direct to the public is outside the food hygiene regulation, and so is registering with the council. That exemption covers primary products only. A product made by mixing honey with fruit is no longer one, so the regulation applies to it, and with it the duty to register as a food business. 2 Selling honey in the UK covers where the line falls.

The label

• An ingredients list, with any of the 14 allergens picked out. 4
• On a jar you fill and sell yourself, at your own stall included, the name of the food and that ingredients list. 4
• On a jar you pack for someone else to sell, the full set of particulars: a best before date, the name and address of the business, and the rest. 3

Fruit without fermenting it

Only a few yeasts can grow in honey’s high sugar, and they multiply more as its water content rises. Below 18% water there is little chance of it fermenting, and even below 17.1% the risk is not gone. 6 Fruit brings water with it, and the juice is the problem. 5

The FAO’s way to put fruit in honey: 5

• Use dried fruit, as dry as possible while still soft: whole, chopped or puréed.
• Fruit that is only partly dried, or stays moist when dried, goes under honey in a sealed jar for a few days. Pour the honey off and do it again, two or three times, until the honey is no longer thinned by the juice. Then mix the fruit with fresh honey and jar it.
• The thinned honey you pour off can be used as a fruit syrup, ideally pasteurised.
• Pasteurising the fruit and the honey improves hygiene and keeping, and lowers the risk of fermentation, though it can change the flavour.

Juice stirred into honey, as in a purple soft set, adds water to it. 5 Heating honey to 60 to 65 °C for a few minutes kills the yeasts found in it. 6 But heating that damages honey’s enzymes is one of the things the law forbids for anything sold as honey, which this no longer is. 1 Soft set honey covers setting honey on its own.

Ferments

Honey left to ferment is no longer honey either: honey that has begun to ferment cannot be sold as honey. 1

The yeasts usually found in honey grow only where the sugar is above 50%. A mix of honey and water does not hold enough yeast of its own to ferment quickly. Mead is the honey wine that needs months or years to mature, and the hard part is controlling its flavour. Honey vinegar is made from mead, as wine vinegar is from wine. 6

When it becomes alcohol

A fruit and honey ferment that makes alcohol is an alcoholic product. Not being made from fresh grapes, it is an “other fermented product”, the class that used to be called made wine. 9

• For yourself: no alcohol duty is charged on alcohol you make only for your own domestic use, as long as it is not a spirit. 7 You do not need HMRC’s approval to make it. 8
• To sell: since 1 February 2025 every producer of alcoholic products must hold an alcoholic products producer approval from HMRC before starting to produce. Producing without one is an offence with a penalty. 8
• Selling it: selling alcohol needs a licence, or for a one-off event a temporary event notice. 10

The short version

• Nothing may be added to honey except honey. Add fruit or juice and it is not honey.
• Do not call it honey, and do not call it “purple honey”.
• Making it to sell makes you a food business: register, and label it with ingredients and allergens.
• Juice adds water, and water lets honey ferment. Use dried fruit, or soak and drain wet fruit two or three times.
• A ferment that makes alcohol: fine for your own use, but making it to sell needs HMRC approval first, and selling it needs a licence.