Blue curls honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

faint herbs, clean sweetness, light florals

Flavour

clean sweetness, faint mint, light floral

Finish

Very short and clean.

Flavour character

• Floral and fruity — floral
• Green and herbal — herbaceous

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

1. Water white0–8 mm — this honey
2. Extra white8–17 mm — this honey
3. White17–34 mm
4. Extra light amber34–50 mm
5. Light amber50–85 mm
6. Amber85–114 mm
7. Dark amber114+ mm

Water-white, and among the palest honeys produced anywhere.

On setting: Rarely encountered set.

Texture

Runny; Thick but pourable

Crystallisation

Very slow, step 1 of 5, from very slow to very fast

Very slow — often still liquid after a year or more; sets with a fine crystal.

Very slow to crystallise, and jars can stay liquid for years. This is part of its commercial appeal.

Typical composition

Moisture

14–17% (typically 15.5%)

Fructose

38–44% (typically 41%)

Glucose

26–32% (typically 29%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

0.6–0.8 (typically 0.71)

pH

3.5–4.2 (typically 3.8)

Electrical conductivity

0.1–0.3 mS/cm (typically 0.15 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

Trichostema lanceolatum, vinegarweed or blue curls, an aromatic annual of dry open ground and disturbed fields in California.

Origins

California, principally the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and the Coast Ranges.

Origin pages

• California

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

Typical harvest

August to October (northern hemisphere)

A very late flow, after almost everything else in California has finished.

A typical window for the honey type, HoneyHQ synthesis — not a calendar for any one place.

The bees

Valuable to colonies precisely for its timing — it arrives when the Californian summer has burnt everything else off and colonies would otherwise be consuming stores.

Usual processing

Raw, Coarsely strained, Spun (centrifugally extracted)

Blue curls is an annual of disturbed ground, so the crop depends on land use as much as on weather. Volumes are small and it is among the harder American varietals to find.

What to do with it

Valued where a honey must sweeten without adding flavour — in cocktails, delicate desserts and light teas.

At the tableDessertsIn hot drinksIn cocktailsDrizzling

Pairings

• Delicate teasClassic

  One of very few honeys that will not overwhelm a white or green tea.

• Fresh fruit

  Sweetness with nothing else added.

• Cocktails

  A honey syrup that adds no competing flavour.

Similar honeys and substitutes

Three different questions with different answers: a honey that tastes alike can behave differently in a recipe, and the same set texture says nothing about flavour. Each list is chosen from the recorded fields that matter to its question — and, where tasting panels or specifications described both honeys, the terms they share — and every suggestion says which, and what will be different. Compare it side by side or build a tasting flight.

History and traditional use

Vinegarweed takes its name from its strong smell when crushed, which is nothing like the honey it produces — one of the clearer demonstrations that a plant's scent and its nectar are unrelated.