Fermentation (mead, kefir) honey
Mead, tej and honey wine — the oldest use of honey there is.
3 honeys · culinary use
Honeys in this group
- Ethiopian white honeyWater white · MildClean, sweet and faintly herbal, with a smooth dense texture that dominates the impression more than the flavour does.
- Ethiopian red honeyAmber · PronouncedStrong 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.
- Niger seed honeyExtra light amber · MildGolden, clean and gently grassy, with a soft finish. Closer to sunflower honey than to the darker forest honeys of the same country.
Plants behind these honeys
- CoffeeCoffea arabicaA heavy but very short-lived nectar source, in flushes rather than as a continuous flow.
- EucalyptusEucalyptusProlific in both nectar and pollen when flowering, though the pollen of some species is nutritionally poor for honey bees, and colonies confined to a single eucalypt species can suffer over time despite abundant forage.
- Niger seedGuizotia abyssinicaA principal Ethiopian honey source and the reason the country's autumn crop is as large as it is, alongside the white honeys of the highland forests.
Guides covering these honeys
- 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.
- How honey was produced before modern beekeepingFor most of human history, taking honey meant destroying the colony. The movable frame is barely 175 years old, and everything before it was a compromise between getting the honey and keeping the bees.
- Honey traditions around the worldHoney turns up in ritual, medicine, marriage and law on every inhabited continent, and the patterns repeat in ways that are hard to explain by contact alone.
Other culinary use groups
Narrow it down further
- Honey finder
Which honey should I buy for what I actually want to do with it?
- Flavour selector
I like this taste — which honeys have it?
- Honey comparison
How do these honeys actually differ, beyond colour?
- Honey substitute calculator
How much honey do I use instead of sugar, and what else has to change?
- Storage guide
How should I store honey, and what do I do when it sets?