Blackberry honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

ripe berry, warm hay, beeswax, faint caramel

Flavour

soft berry, light caramel, hedgerow greenery, rounded sweetness

Finish

Medium and mellow.

Intensity

Moderate

Sweetness

Sweet

Bitterness

None

Acidity

Moderate

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

Extra light amber (34-50 mm Pfund)toLight amber (50-85 mm Pfund)toAmber (85-114 mm Pfund)

Warm light amber, occasionally with a reddish cast in heavier crops.

On setting: Sets to an opaque pale tan.

Texture

Runny; Thick but pourable; Soft set

Crystallisation

Slow — months before it starts to granulate

Moderately fructose-leaning, so it typically stays liquid for six months to a year before setting to a medium grain. Slower than most hedgerow honeys, which is part of why it holds up well on a shelf.

Typical composition

Moisture

15–18.5% (typically 17%)

Fructose

39–44% (typically 41%)

Glucose

29–34% (typically 31.5%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

0.68–0.85 (typically 0.77)

pH

3.6–4.3 (typically 3.9)

Electrical conductivity

0.15–0.4 mS/cm (typically 0.26 mS/cm)

These are typical ranges assembled across published work, not measurements of a specific honey.

What these mean: the sugars and the ratio · moisture · conductivity · how each is measured

Where it comes from

Floral source

Rubus fruticosus in the aggregate sense — hundreds of largely apomictic microspecies that no beekeeper distinguishes and no laboratory usefully separates.

Origins

Britain, Ireland, France, Germany and across temperate Europe; the Pacific Northwest and eastern United States, where introduced Himalayan blackberry produces large crops.

Origin pages

• United Kingdom
• Ireland
• Germany

Resolved from both directions — origins this honey names, and origins that name it.

Harvest

June to August (northern hemisphere)

An unusually long window. Individual canes flower in succession over weeks, which turns what would be a short flow into a sustained one.

The bees

Bramble's value is its dependability rather than its intensity. It flowers through the midsummer gap after the spring tree flows and before the heather and ivy, and it keeps secreting in weather that shuts lime and clover down — which makes it the plant that carries a great many colonies through July.

Usual processing

Spun (centrifugally extracted), Coarsely strained, Raw, Filtered

Rarely sold as a named monofloral outside small-scale and direct sales, because bramble almost always flowers alongside something else. A great deal of British and Irish wildflower honey is substantially bramble.

What to do with it

A genuinely versatile honey — enough character to be tasted, not enough to interfere. One of the better all-purpose honeys, and considerably more interesting than clover at a similar price.

At the tableSpreadingBakingIn hot drinksWith cheeseGlazing and roasting

Pairings

• Scones and clotted creamClassic

  The honey behaves like a mild fruit preserve, which is exactly the role required.

• Mature cheddar

  Enough fruit to meet a sharp cheese without either party disappearing.

• Porridge and yoghurt

  Warm and rounded, and sweet without being flat.

History and traditional use

Bramble is a beneficiary of neglect. Hedgerow removal reduced it and abandoned land, railway margins and scrubbed-over pasture have more than compensated — one of the few important bee plants that modern land use has accidentally increased.