Subject: Re: How to process OSR (Oil Seed Rape) honey the easy way
From: Murray McGregor <[log in to unmask]>
Newsgroups: sci.agriculture.beekeeping

>Agree with the general principles but...
>Who wants pure OSR (not OCR!) honey - even if it is soft set?

A bit judgemental is this not?  The answer is 'lots of people', and the
negative opinion on OSR honey is to a large extent a British opinion. It
is held in fairly good regard most places, and the low opinion of it in
the UK amuses some of my continental colleagues greatly, and in
occasional glut years gives them an opportunity to buy quite cheaply a
honey they see as undervalued at source.

Perhaps as a beekeeper, you, similar to myself, have developed a taste
for the somewhat more pronounced flavours of lime or sycamore, but it is
important to remember that much of our customer base is not composed of
experienced afficionados and many of them DO like blander types.
Tastings we have carried out at major public events we have attended as
far south as London and Birmingham have shown that straight rape, and
rape plus 10% lime, were the two most popular blossom flavours, and
anything containing sycamore was noticeably less so. Even our premium
raspberry flower honey scored worse than the rape over 4 days at the BBC
Good Food Show. It is really important to remember that we sell our
honey to meet public expectations, not to satisfy our personal
preferences, although the two factors are interlinked.

We produce and pack at least 20 tonnes of this 'accursed' product each
year and could sell more (much more!). It is well liked by our
clientelle when packed correctly and many will travel to buy it, some of
whom then tell us how they dislike 'that awful OSR honey', and that ours
is much better. The surprise, even disbelief, when you tell them the
floral origin is fun to see. It is a honey needing a little specialist
handling, NOT a bad honey. Do it right and the customer will come back
for more.

>My technique is:
>
>Extract, strain to bottling quality and store all honey in 30lb buckets.
>If you have to heat some of the honey to strain it then this will probably
>set with a coarse grain.
>The unheated OSR will set with a very fine grain - label these buckets as
>they will be your seed honey.

Not always. Especially in the case of spring sown varieties there can
sometimes be a very rough crystallisation. Only way is to test the
pails.

>When you need to bottle set honey, melt honey at 120 degrees F for 24 hours.
>Choose some OSR and some darker honey to give a good 'honey' colour.  The
>darker honey will improve the flavour.
>Put it in the bottling tank and allow to cool around 70-80 degrees F.
>Add 5% seed honey.
>Stir (I have a tank with a stirrer - Maxant - but you could use the electric
>drill) twice a day for about 10-15mins until set - usually 3-5 days.
>The honey can be left in the tank until you are ready to bottle, then warm
>to 100-104F (no higher or it will melt)and stir.

Works OK, and both methods are sound enough, but they are seriously
laborious and/or time consuming.

All that is really needed is to filter and seed the honey at harvest
time, then just run it off into pails, barrels or whatever. Then just
store it until such time as you need it. Once it has completely set it
just needs a gentle soften, a QUICK stir with a paddle (like 30 secs for
a 60lb pail or a couple of minutes for a barrel), tip it into the
bottling machine, and away you go. You just draw what you need for the
next days run from stock, soften it overnight and pack it. Done
correctly it will never go hard again, and maintain a 'spreadable set'
consistency. Many (probably the majority) of our clients do not want it
to be a 'flowing set' which moves if the jar is tilted or inverted.

Melting too far back can, as suggested allow the crystal matrix to
reform and the it can go quite hard and frosting can occur. Not far
enough back and the beating causes a structure breakdown in one of the
sugars allowing water migration to take place, resulting in seperation
into two layers in the worst cases, or a 'furring' of fine bubbles in
less severe cases. None of these are appealing to the eye and depress
sales badly.
(This could get overly technical here about the interlocking crystal
matrixes of different sugars melting at different temperatures, but
there are people out there on this group who probably know a lot more
about that than I do.)

>The honey will flow easily, set to a soft consistency and never frost unless
>subjected to extremely low temperatures(I have some over 3 years old).

Ditto, but the line between frosting and seperation can be a fine one
with this honey. It is best to work as closely as is practicable to a
'bottle to order' system and not stocked in jars for protracted periods,
but if you must it stores best kept fairly cool and preferrably in the
dark.

Murray
--
Murray McGregor