Fermentation

Definition

Osmotolerant yeasts survive honey's sugar concentration and become active when water content rises above about 20 per cent. The result froths and smells of alcohol. This is the realistic way to ruin honey and it is entirely preventable — keep the lid on and never put a wet spoon in the jar. Deliberate fermentation of diluted honey produces mead.

Honey records that discuss this

• Sundarbans mangrove honeyLight, tangy and faintly saline with a fresh floral character — considerably more delicate than its dramatic provenance would suggest.
• Ethiopian red honeyStrong and warm with a malty depth, a resinous eucalyptus lift and a faint smokiness from traditional harvesting — an assertive honey that stands up to fermentation.
• Oil-tea camellia honeyPale, thin and distinctly bitter, with an astringent tea-like finish. Not a beginner's honey and not really a pleasure honey.
• Mandaçaia honeySofter and rounder than the northeastern stingless honeys — still acidic, but with more caramel behind it and less citrus sharpness.

Guide records that discuss this

• Why honey has different texturesRunny, set, creamed, thixotropic and comb are five different things, and only one of them is a processing decision. The rest follow from sugar chemistry and from what the bees put in the jar.
• Honey aroma explainedMost of what people call the taste of a honey is smell, arriving from the back of the mouth. The compounds responsible are present at parts per million, the two things that destroy them fastest are heat and time — and professional panels describe them with a vocabulary of seven families that is worth knowing.

Question records that discuss this

• What is bee bread?Bee bread is pollen packed into a cell with nectar, honey and bee secretions — the colony's stored protein, eaten by nurse bees to make the food they feed larvae. It is often said to be fermented into something more digestible; a 2014 study found little evidence of that, so treat the fermentation story as contested. It is not the same thing as the bee pollen sold as a supplement.
• Why has my honey separated into layers?Almost always partial crystallisation: glucose comes out of solution and sinks, leaving a wetter, runnier, fructose-rich layer on top. It is not spoilage and stirring or gentle warming fixes it. The one exception is fermentation — froth, a sharp cidery smell, and a lid that has bulged — and that honey should be thrown away.