How to Store and Serve Raw Honey Through the Year

Honey keeps longer than almost anything else in a kitchen. What changes in a jar over a year is not safety. It is texture, and to a smaller degree character. Most of what people take for a fault is ordinary chemistry, and most of the damage done to good honey at home is done in the thirty seconds spent trying to fix it.

Here is what actually happens inside the jar, where to keep it, and how to serve it through a Canadian year.

What is actually in the jar

Honey is a supersaturated sugar solution. Roughly forty percent of it is fructose and roughly a quarter is glucose, with the balance made up of water, minor sugars and the trace compounds that give a floral source its character. Two of those numbers govern everything about storage.

The first is water. The Codex Alimentarius Standard for Honey, CXS 12-1981 sets a general moisture ceiling of 20 percent. Canada is stricter at the top grade. The Canadian Grade Compendium, Volume 6 requires Canada No. 1 honey to hold not more than 17.8 percent moisture, or 18.6 percent if it has been pasteurised. Water is the reason those limits exist. Honey much above 20 percent water is far more likely to ferment, because there is enough free moisture for yeasts to work in.

The second is heat. Hydroxymethylfurfural, usually shortened to HMF, is a compound that forms slowly in honey as it ages and quickly when it is warmed. The Codex standard sets an HMF ceiling of 40 milligrams per kilogram, rising to 80 for honey declared from countries with tropical ambient temperatures. HMF is the standard laboratory marker for how much heat and time a honey has seen. It is a quality indicator, and it is why the phrase never heated beyond its natural state means something specific.

Crystallisation is chemistry, not spoilage

Honey that turns cloudy, grainy or solid has not gone off. It has done what a supersaturated solution does, which is drop the excess sugar out of solution as crystals. Glucose is the sugar that comes out first, so the ratio of glucose to fructose in the floral source decides how fast a honey sets. Higher glucose sets faster. This is why one season's jar can firm up in six weeks and the next can stay liquid for a year, from the same origin.

Temperature decides the rest. Crystallisation runs fastest at around 14 degrees Celsius. That is roughly the temperature of a cold pantry, a basement shelf or a garage in shoulder season, and close enough to a refrigerator that the fridge is the wrong place for a jar you want to pour.

Codex is worth quoting on this point. The standard states that chemical or biochemical treatments shall not be used to influence honey crystallisation. Setting is not a defect to be engineered away. It is a property of the honey.

One nuance often confuses people. The Canadian grade standard requires honey labelled as liquid honey to be clear, bright and free from visible crystals to carry Canada No. 1. That is a rule about how a product presented as liquid must look at the point of grading. It is not a judgement that set honey is inferior. A jar that leaves clear and firms up on a shelf in February has not lost its grade.

Where to keep the jar

The rules are short.

• Room temperature, in a dry cupboard. Somewhere between 18 and 24 degrees is comfortable and sits above the band where crystals form fastest.
• Not the refrigerator. Cold does not preserve honey. It stiffens it and speeds up setting.
• Out of direct sun. A sunlit windowsill warms a jar repeatedly, and repeated warming is what drives HMF up.
• Lid closed, tightly. Honey is hygroscopic. It pulls moisture out of the air, and added water is what pushes a jar toward fermenting.
• A dry spoon, every time. Water and crumbs introduce moisture and yeasts. A wooden dipper that lives beside the jar rather than in it is the simplest fix.

There is no need to decant. The jar it arrives in is the right container, and every transfer is another chance to add moisture.

Bringing set honey back to a pour

This is where good honey usually gets ruined. A microwave heats unevenly and takes small volumes far past any sensible temperature in seconds. A saucepan on direct heat does the same more slowly. Both raise HMF and flatten the aromatics that made the honey worth buying.

The method that works is patient and dull.

1. Fill a bowl or a deep pan with warm water from the tap. Take it off the heat entirely.
2. Stand the closed jar in the water so the water sits below the rim. Leave it for twenty to thirty minutes.
3. Open, stir gently, close, and repeat with fresh warm water if it is still stiff.
4. Keep the water comfortable to the hand rather than hot. Below 40 degrees is the working number. Guidance from Southern Cross University's honey research group puts 45 degrees as the point beyond which quality begins to be affected and HMF starts to climb.

Do this once rather than weekly. Each cycle of warming and cooling adds a little more heat history to the jar. If a honey sets hard and you use it slowly, the better answer is to stop fighting it and use it as a spread.

Serving through the year

Warm months

In summer the honey pours thin and reads bright. Spoon it over stone fruit, peaches and apricots halved and grilled. Stir it into yoghurt with toasted walnuts. Whisk it with cider vinegar, mustard and olive oil for a dressing that suits bitter leaves. Finish a plate of ricotta and grilled bread with a slow line of it and coarse salt.

Cool months

In winter it firms up, and that is when it does its best work on a knife. Spread it on hot buttered toast or a warm scone. Serve it on a board with aged cheddar, a blue and a hard sheep's milk cheese, with the jar open and a dipper across the top. Add it to tea once the cup has stopped steaming rather than to water straight off the boil, so the aromatics survive the pour.

At the table

Serve at room temperature. Cold honey tastes of very little. A wooden dipper carries a clean thread and drips less than a spoon. Put the jar on a small plate, and keep the lid on between rounds.

Two things worth knowing

Infants. Health Canada advises that no type of honey, pasteurised or unpasteurised, should be given to babies under one year of age. The guidance applies to all honey, from every source.

Dates on the jar. Honey's keeping quality is exceptional, and a best before date on a jar is the packer's statement about peak quality rather than a safety cliff. Stored dry, closed and away from heat, a jar stays good for a long time. It will very likely set before it does anything else.

The short version

1. Cupboard, not fridge. Dry, dark, 18 to 24 degrees.
2. Lid tight. Honey pulls water from the air.
3. Dry spoon or a wooden dipper, never a wet one.
4. Setting is normal. It is the glucose, not a fault.
5. To loosen it, stand the jar in warm water off the heat. Never a microwave.
6. Serve at room temperature.

The jar we send

Hey Honey Farms sells one thing. A gift box holding two 600 gram jars, 1,200 grams in total, of single source Ontario wildflower honey, Grade 1, in the golden colour class. It is raw and unpasteurised, never heated beyond its natural state, nothing added, never blended.

We select it, rest it, and hand pack it in small batches, and every jar is wrapped in honeycomb and tied by hand. The box also holds a wooden honey dipper, a beeswax lip balm and a cotton tote. It is one variant at $109 CAD with free shipping across Canada. Orders are dispatched within two business days and most arrive 3 to 7 business days after dispatch. It holds a 4.95 average and is loved by more than 100 customers.

The sequence behind the box is on our process page. Common questions about setting, storage and delivery are answered in the FAQ. The box itself is here.