Granulating oil seed rape honey

Hello

I have fairly recently moved from an area where there is no oil seed rape (Croydon) to Lincolnshire where oil seed rape is absolutely everywhere.

I was aware it granulated quickly and managed to extract it fairly well from the frames but the subsequent granulation in the jars has been causing me problems. I understand that this can be ,if not overcome, then helped by heat treatment. Can anyone help me with the exact method for this.

Also does this treatment last for a reasonable length of time or does it have to be repeated.

Thanks Richard

Once a bucket of granulated honey is melted back to liquid it can be seeded with a soft set honey, normally 1:10 seed:melted honey. Stirred well to distribute the seed evenly you should be good. Best temperature for this is probably around 14 degrees C, so may be slow in the summer.

Alternatively you can warm the honey carefully until it is mobile and stir-able, but don't allow to go liquid. Stirring breaks up the crystal structure. Stir often, as it'll break your arm to do it all at once. Check that the crystal size is acceptable to your palate and if so, bottle while warm and mobile.

There is more than one way to skin a cat and just melting back to liquid will change the structure of the crystals somewhat.

Grind a jar or so of your honey till you can't feel the crystals or buy a jar of clover honey. Use that as your seed.
You will have to melt all the honey you are seeding properly or it will set on the larger crystals still present.
Proper soft set honey is lovely......consistency of butter and you can get lots on your toast.
This is the best time of year to make it as it is cold.....as per Hombre.
Some folk prepare it in a bucket, let it set and remelt before jarring.
It's supposed to help prevent frosting.
I don't bother.....straight into jars for me.
Keep a couple of jars back to use for seed for your next batch

PS If you're using bought honey never feed any of your mix back to the bees

Richard12 presumably has rock hard spoon bending honey with heavy frosting. He probably has bottled the honey after filtering and has naturally set OSR honey. I am surprised that local Lincs beekeepers (OSR is often their main crop) didn't advise him to bottle it in bulk in buckets first and then go through the soft set process

No need for grinding up a seed for OSR honey to get a fine set as its crystal is naturally always small and smooth (unless you have overheated the honey before filtering which case you get a larger coarser crystal when it granulates).

Thanks very much for your replies everyone. I have not made soft set honey yet but I will have a go this year and follow your advice.
I was asking really about converting granulated back to runny honey which I personally prefer. I can do this easily in my warming cabinet at about 35-40 degrees C but it tends to return to granulated pretty quickly. I was wondering about possible ways of keeping the honey in this liquid state.

OSR honey always granulates quickly pretty much whatever you do to it. OSR does produce fine crystals when it granulates so seeding is not necessary to produce a soft set honey.

Richard12 said:

Thanks very much for your replies everyone. I have not made soft set honey yet but I will have a go this year and follow your advice.
I was asking really about converting granulated back to runny honey which I personally prefer. I can do this easily in my warming cabinet at about 35-40 degrees C but it tends to return to granulated pretty quickly. I was wondering about possible ways of keeping the honey in this liquid state.

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Because of the Glucose/Fructose proportions in OSR nectar, the honey sets. And fast.
By blending OSR with a high-fructose (runny) honey, you'd get something that didn't set quite so fast, but would still head in that direction, likely at even 20% OSR.
You can keep honey runny for longer (after 'melting') by 1/ ensuring that it is absolutely utterly totally 100% remelted (give it longer at about 40C, hotter isn't better) and 2/ straining out any 'foreign bodies' by using a 200 micron (or so) filter. This is because crystallisation needs some sort of foundation to start from - fewer 'nucleation sites' (or seeds) the more crystallisation is postponed.
Industrial "runny" honeys are subjected to high pressure ultra-filtration (which also requires heating the honey) and removing essentially all the pollen (which acts as nucleation sites).
But with OSR, home-processed, granulation and setting is rarely postponed for long.

All this explains why folks with OSR make "soft-set" honey. Its about the best you can do with it ...
The process is about controlled seeding with VERY fine crystals (and lots of them), stirring to break up anything getting large, and then using the temperature at which the stuff will crystallise fastest (about 12C).

The normal procedure is to keep the honey in plastic honey buckets (allowing it to set as it chooses) and store it like that, only processing to soft set immediately before jarring.


For yourself, if you really want the odd jar of runny honey, you could remelt a couple of jars at a time. A slow cooker (or rice cooker) used as a warm water bath, may come in handy for this - but do measure (and control) the temperature it runs at --- you really don't want more than 45C for any length of time.

Oscarmonster said:

... OSR does produce fine crystals when it granulates so seeding is not necessary to produce a soft set honey.

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You may be lucky enough to have a local forage balance that produces this behaviour --- but it is far from a universal experience!
You should recognise your good fortune, because most OSR honey sets to something that I describe as "spoon-bendingly hard".

itma said:

You may be lucky enough to have a local forage balance that produces this behaviour --- but it is far from a universal experience!
You should recognise your good fortune, because most OSR honey sets to something that I describe as "spoon-bendingly hard".

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Yes if allowed to set it does go rock hard, but OSR honey crystals are still fine.

So if you melted it and used some of the set stuff as a seed and jarred it straightaway......how would it set?
Rock hard again or soft?

Oscarmonster said:

OSR does produce fine crystals when it granulates so seeding is not necessary to produce a soft set honey.

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Oscarmonster said:

Yes if allowed to set it does go rock hard, but OSR honey crystals are still fine.

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It appears that you are now contradicting yourself!

itma said:

It appears that you are now contradicting yourself!

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Sorry, I just don't have the time to write an essay on such basics.

Oscarmonster said:

Sorry, I just don't have the time to write an essay on such basics.

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You don't need too, i know exactly what you mean, and agree with you, i expect most others know what you mean as well.

I have some OSR honey from last year it wasn't seeded just heated and stirred. It is still the same as when it was put in the jar.

.
Buy soft grain honey seed from Lidl or something

Extract honey
- sieve it
- let air bubbles and rubish raise up in warm Place 24 hours
- put grease paper on the surface. The rest of small rubbish will get stuck to it.

- mix seed into the honey
- stir daily the mixture so that is jammed.

If you let it first granulate, it is more laborous job to handle.

Finman said:

.
Buy soft grain honey seed from Lidl or something
Extract honey
- sieve it
- let air bubbles and rubish raise up in warm Place 24 hours
- put grease paper on the surface. The rest of small rubbish will get stuck to it.
- mix seed into the honey
- stir daily the mixture so that is jammed.
If you let it first granulate, it is more laborous job to handle.

Click to expand...

Never thought of that. Moreover, I jar OSR straight from the settling tank and have never had the jars set rock hard

There must be other mixes of honey types (despite OSR being the predominant source) in that otherwise it would go rock hard. Keep hoping that it continues!