The best frost we’ll get all winter

[u/Valuable-Self8564]

I’m saving this in my personal honey archive. Such a beautiful jar.

[u/epicurianistmonk]

What am I looking at?

[u/Valuable-Self8564 → u/epicurianistmonk]

Honey frosting.

This is a VERY fine grain set honey. Set honeys contract as they set, so you often find veins of air going down into the honey, or the honey contracting away from the wall of the jar, leaving what looks like freshly fallen snow.

[u/Background_Stand5539 → u/Valuable-Self8564]

what a beauty

[u/Philly_Beek → u/epicurianistmonk]

Crystallized honey

[u/epicurianistmonk → u/Philly_Beek]

Ahh I see, very light colored than what I’m used to seeing

[u/buckleyc → u/epicurianistmonk]

Yeah, this^.

[u/Phonochrome]

Wow how's the moisture of this batch?

[u/Valuable-Self8564 → u/Phonochrome]

About 18%.

[u/Phonochrome → u/Valuable-Self8564]

I guess it was hard work and you stirred it to perfection and not random Chance?

[u/Valuable-Self8564 → u/Phonochrome]

Neither. It wasn’t stirred once (unless you count adding the seed), and it wasn’t random chance. The seed was ground to a fine pulp in a nutribullet (harder than it sounds because of viscosity). The recipient honey is heated to 50°C for 24hrs to make sure there’s no granulation in it. It is then cooled. When the recipient hits 25°C, the seed is thoroughly stirred in, jarred up, and left in a cooling cabinet at 14°C for a month. Once it’s set, it will stay set forever (unless it’s heated).

It is a fairly meticulous process that I just described in barebones, but requires no stirring at all.

[u/WillyMonty → u/Valuable-Self8564]

“Thoroughly stirred in”

“Requires no stirring at all”

?

[u/Valuable-Self8564 → u/WillyMonty]

The difference here is that a lot of recipes for set honeys with small grain sizes require daily stirring with fairly industrious equipment to keep grain size small. The method for his type of set honey is mostly set and forget, aside from the day you stir in the seed.

[u/parametricRegression → u/Valuable-Self8564]

Sounds like it also involves heating the honey to 50C.

smh

It looks so cool though! 🔥

[u/Phonochrome → u/Valuable-Self8564]

Not stirred, still perfection. Yes meticulous process is a good description, I can imagine as I myself am a mere barrelman and my stirrer stirs on a clock, furthermore I am too stingy for a cooled barrel.

But as ever I will steal what is applicable, nutribullet for seeding honey. Until now I had a fridge full of honey in vacuum bags and I massaged em thrice a day. My family complained about a dslistinct lack of fridge space but those days are gone.

Thank you

[u/Valuable-Self8564 → u/Phonochrome]

The nutribullet method, you have to start with a relatively small seed and tip the thing on its side so that the honey is just licking the blades. Once you have a good set honey, you can keep 5L of it set aside as the seed for the next batch. I won’t need to do this next year.

The seed will need warming to 25°C before adding so it’s easy to stir in.

[u/drones_on_about_bees]

That looks beautiful

[u/_Mulberry__]

Reminds me of lions mane mushrooms 🍄