Making soft set honey

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Set honey is just honey

Worth saying first, because people worry about it. The regulations say honey may be fluid, viscous, or partly or entirely crystallised. 1 A set jar is not a processed product. It is honey in another physical state.

The legal name is still honey. “Set”, “soft set”, “creamed” and “spun” are not reserved descriptions and have no statutory definition. 2 You may use them as descriptive words alongside the legal name, as long as they do not mislead.

There is no legal grain size behind “soft set”. Nobody can tell you that your jar is not soft set enough.

The only thing you may add is honey

No food ingredient and no additive may go into honey. The single exception is other honey. 3

That is exactly why seeding works as a method: the seed is honey, so adding it is allowed. Nothing else goes in. No thickener, no starch, no glucose powder.

One consequence people miss. Your seed becomes part of the blend, so if you seed an English crop with a bought jar of imported honey, the country of origin on your label has to reflect that. Selling honey in the UK covers origin labelling. Seed with your own honey and the problem does not arise.

Why honey sets fine or gritty

Crystallisation happens in two stages: nuclei form, then crystals grow on them. The number of nuclei decides everything. Many nuclei means the available sugar is shared between many small crystals, and that is a fine, creamy set. Few nuclei means the same sugar piles onto a few sites, and you get large crystals you can feel on your tongue.

So making soft set honey is not about making honey set. It is about making it set with as many nuclei as possible.

Temperature does most of the work

This is the finding that should change how you do it. In trials on 25 kg batches of rape-rich spring honey run over three seasons, stirring temperature was the most important factor for creaminess. At an optimum of 14 °C, the amount of seed, the stirring time and how often it was stirred all made very little difference. 4

Honey stirred at room temperature finished with noticeably larger crystals than honey stirred at 14 °C. 4

In other words: if you can hold 14 °C, stop worrying about the fussy details. If you cannot, the fussy details start to matter, and seeding is what compensates.

Making it

The straightforward version, for a bucket in a garage:

1. Start with sound honey. Under 20% water, and nothing that has begun to ferment. Soft set does not rescue a doubtful batch, it just hides it for a while. Getting the honey out of the comb covers measuring the water.
2. Make or find a seed. A jar of honey that has already set finely is what you want. Break it up as thoroughly as you can, because the finer the seed, the finer the result.
3. Mix in about one part seed to nine of liquid honey. Published work on seeding at 5, 10 and 15% found up to 10% seed and around nine days at 14 °C gave the result they recommended, and the unseeded control produced no crystals at all over the same period. 5
4. Stir without whipping air in. Keep the stirrer below the surface. Air bubbles make a pale foam that rises and looks like a fault in the jar.
5. Hold it near 14 °C and stir once or twice a day for several days.
6. Jar it while it is still just pourable. Leave it too long in the bucket and you will be spooning it.

Then leave the jars somewhere cool to finish. It firms up for a week or two after jarring.

What goes wrong

• Gritty. Too few nuclei, or too warm while it set. Re-melt gently and start again with a finer seed.
• Frosting. White patches against the glass. Tiny air bubbles and slight shrinkage, not a fault, and harmless. Stirring less air in reduces it.
• Too hard. Left too long before jarring, or too much seed.
• Separated, with a soft layer on top. Usually honey that was too wet. Measure it.
• Fermented. Not recoverable. Crystallising honey concentrates water into the liquid around the crystals, so a part set bucket of damp honey is the most likely thing in your store to ferment.

How hard you may re-melt it

There is a legal ceiling on this, not just a quality one. Honey must not have been heated so that the natural enzymes are destroyed or significantly inactivated, and that is measured through a minimum diastase activity and a maximum HMF of 40 mg/kg. 6

So warm a failed batch gently and slowly, and only until the crystals have gone. The classic commercial process for creamed honey used a heating step around 71 °C to destroy yeasts, and that belongs to a 1930s factory rather than to a beekeeper working with sound, dry honey. Going anywhere near it will cost you enzymes and gain you HMF.

The short version

• Set honey is legally just honey. “Soft set” is a description, not a category.
• The only thing you may add to honey is other honey.
• Fine grain means many nuclei, and that is mostly a temperature question.
• 14 °C matters more than how long or how often you stir.
• About one part seed to nine, stirred without whipping air in.
• Jar it while it still pours.
• Re-melt gently. There is a legal limit on how hard honey may be heated.