Honey can be raw, unpasteurized or pasteurized. But what is the difference? And is one better than the other? We explain it all.

The difference in these three types of honey can be found in the way the honey is processed.

Raw honey can be seen as honey straight from the  hive. It is extracted from the honeycombs and poured over a simple screen to separate the honey from any impurities. Once the honey has been  extracted, it is jarred without being heated and only lightly filtered.  Due to the honey being kept in it’s natural state, it still contains all  of it’s nutritional properties. 

Unpasteurized honey is slightly heated while being processed. Most of the honeys nutritional properties will still be present after processing.

Pasteurized honey has been exposed to high heat  while being processed. During the heating process, the yeast that is  naturally present in honey will be destroyed, giving it a smoother  texture. Unfortunately the high heat also destroys most of the honeys  nutritional properties. Pasteurized honey will therefor contain fewer  antioxidants, amino acids, vitamins, minerals and healthy enzymes than  raw and unpasteurized honey. For this reason all of our honey sold at Maple Acres Apiary is raw and unpasteurized. 

Honey Crystallization

After having honey in your pantry for some time, you might notice  that it is starting to crystallize. This will eventually happen to all  liquid honeys and does not affect the quality of the honey! Raw and  unpasteurized honey will in most cases turn into a crystallized state sooner than pasteurized honey. This is due to the fact that these honeys are heated at a lower temperature during processing. 

Is your honey crystallized and do you want to turn it into a liquid  form again? Remove the lid and place the jar in hot water. Stir gently.  The gentle heat will return your honey to it’s liquid state and won't destroy any of the beneficial nutrients in it. . It’s ready to  enjoy again in liquid form. 

Creamed honey is pale white in color, while regular honey is golden.

Creamed honey refers to natural honey that has undergone processing to regulate crystallization, resulting in a smooth, creamy texture. It's also referred to as spun honey, churned honey, and whipped honey. One way of making creamed honey is by taking raw honey  from a liquid state to a solid state by a very simple yet unique process.  We basically take a ‘seed’, like you do with sour dough bread. That seed gets added to liquid honey while its being stirred and cooled. The small glucose and fructose crystals that make up the  creamed honey will start replicating themselves and turn the whole batch  of liquid honey into creamed honey within days. You can also make creamed honey by whipping liquid honey until the honey crystals break up into tiny crystals. There are a number of physical characteristics that make creamed honey different from raw honey. For instance:

• Creamed honey is pale white in colour, while regular honey is golden.
• After crystallization, creamed honey forms small crystals while regular honey turns into large crystals.
• Creamed honey is soft and spreads easily.
• Creamed honey is thicker than regular honey.
• Regular honey drips off toast but creamed honey sticks perfectly.

Currently we are not selling creamed honey yet but check back with us in the future as this is something we may add to our store at a later date. 

After collecting the sugar-rich nectar, the bees deliver it to the  beehive where moisture is removed at it is turned into raw honey. Varying flowers have distinct ratios of fructose and glucose and different flavor and scent profiles. Ultimately, the flavor, smell, and crystals in the honey reflect these different ratios of fructose and glucose found in the flowers the bees are foraging on and collecting nectar from.

Honey bees forage on all kinds of different flowers; collecting nectar rich in fructose and glucose. This means that there are different types of honeys based on the source the bees are collecting nectar from.

After collecting the sugar-rich nectar, the bees deliver it to the  beehive where moisture is removed at it is turned into raw honey. Varying flowers have distinct ratios of fructose and glucose and different flavour and scent profiles. Ultimately, the flavour, smell, and crystals in the honey reflect these different ratios of fructose and glucose found in the flowers the bees are foraging on and collecting nectar from.

For instance, honey from clovers or sunflowers usually crystallizes  faster. Whereas honey from eucalyptus or maple crystallizes slower.

Is thick, viscous honey better than runny honey?

Not at all. Lot's of different factors come into play and will affect the viscosity of honey. Raw  Honey is uncooked, unheated, unprocessed, and unfiltered or very lightly filtered, (to remove only wax cappings)  which contains all enzymes, vitamins etc, that comes straight from the honey comb. Raw  honey is not always thick like the processed honey. "Raw" does not  equate with "thickness " for honey. The texture, color, viscosity, taste  of raw honey depends upon various factors. So each time you buy raw  honey even from the same seller there is a great chance that the taste,  viscosity, color, etc. varies.
 

In  its pure form, raw honey contains all the enzymes, antioxidants and  minerals. In Processed, pasteurized honey, almost all its enzymes, antioxidants and  minerals are destroyed on being treated with heat and more often,  replaced with synthetic material to undertake mass production. Many of the beautiful, golden bottles sitting on  supermarket shelves contain commercial honey that has been pasteurized  (heated at about 70 degree Celsius followed by rapid cooling). This  makes it easy to filter, handle and package and gives the liquid a  cleaner and smoother finish but a lot of it natural goodness is lost in the process. Honey is made up of more than 70% sugars, less than 20%  water and trace minerals. So when Honey travels from the farms to the  middlemen to one factory for processing and then another factory for  packaging and by the time it reaches the stores all that is left are  glucose and fructose plus added preservatives and stabilizers. When  looks, taste, thickness etc stay same each time in commercial honey, it  is far from what raw, natural honey would be. During commercial pasteurization,  the heating of the honey also removes excess moisture from the honey resulting in sometimes overly thick honey. Some commercial pasteurized honey can be found to be as low as 12-14% moisture levels. Small, organic, apiaries like Maple Acres Apiary do not use those harmful methods of extraction and pasteurization. We use natural methods and ensure the moisture levels in our extracted honey is at the safe, recommended moisture levels of 16.5 to 18% which we test with a professional grade refractometer before bottling.

The nectar sources the bees chose to forage on and use to make their honey also has a direct relation to the honeys viscosity. This is also why during the year the flavor, smell and viscosity of the bees honey will change due to the bees foraging on so many different wildflowers which change with the seasons and foraging locations of the bees.