Coffee blossom honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

jasmine, orange blossom, warm sugar, green leaf

Flavour

jasmine, light caramel, citrus blossom, clean sweetness

Finish

Perfumed and medium-long.

Intensity

Moderate

Sweetness

Very sweet

Bitterness

None

Acidity

Moderate

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

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

Light amber, clear and bright.

On setting: Sets to a fine pale cream.

Texture

Runny; Thick but pourable; Soft set

Crystallisation

Moderate — granulates over a few months

Granulates over a few months with fine even crystals.

Typical composition

Moisture

16–20% (typically 17.8%)

Fructose

37–43% (typically 40%)

Glucose

30–36% (typically 33%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

0.75–0.94 (typically 0.83)

pH

3.6–4.4 (typically 4)

Electrical conductivity

0.15–0.45 mS/cm (typically 0.28 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

Coffea arabica principally, and to a lesser extent C. canephora. The flowers last only two or three days, which is why the flow is so intense and so brief.

Origins

Central and South America — Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico — plus Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, India and Vietnam.

Origin pages

• Ethiopia
• Southeast Asia
• Indonesia
• Vietnam
• Kenya
• Tanzania
• Guatemala

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

Harvest

February to May (both hemispheres)

Triggered by rainfall rather than by date, so the timing shifts with the season and differs by altitude. Several flushes can occur in one year.

The bees

One of the better-documented pollination relationships in the catalogue. Arabica is largely self-fertile, but bee visitation measurably raises fruit set, bean weight and uniformity — studies in Latin America and Indonesia have found yield increases in the tens of percent where wild and managed bees are abundant near forest fragments. Stingless bees and Africanized honey bees do much of this work in Latin America.

Usual processing

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

Coffee honey is a genuine dual-return crop: the beekeeper gets honey, the grower gets a measurably better harvest, and the relationship strengthens the argument for keeping forest fragments near plantations, since wild bee abundance falls sharply with distance from them.

What to do with it

A tasting honey. Its jasmine character is heat-sensitive, so use it cold — and, contrary to the obvious instinct, it is not especially interesting in coffee, where the roast overwhelms it.

At the tableDrizzlingDessertsIn hot drinksWith cheeseIn cocktails

Pairings

• Fresh cheeses and creamClassic

  A plain carrier for a perfumed honey, which is what this one needs.

• Citrus and almond desserts

  The honey is carrying orange blossom already; the pairing extends it.

• Jasmine tea

  The same aromatic from two directions, and one of the few teas that will not bury it.