HoneyHQ

Longan honey

Intensely aromatic — caramel, dried tropical fruit and a distinctive musky floral note that is unlike anything in the European catalogue.

MonofloralPronouncedCaramelFruityFloral

One of Asia's great honeys and almost unknown in the West. Longan is a subtropical fruit tree grown at enormous scale across southern China, Thailand and Vietnam, and its honey is amber, thick and extraordinarily aromatic — a dense caramel-and-tropical-fruit perfume that carries well beyond the jar. In Thailand it is the benchmark domestic honey, and northern Thai longan honey is a named regional product.

Flavour and aroma

Aroma
dried longan fruit, caramel, musk, warm spice
Flavour
dark caramel, dried fruit, a musky floral depth, faint smoke
Finish
Very long and perfumed.
Intensity
Pronounced
Sweetness
Very sweet
Bitterness
None
Acidity
Low

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour
Light amber (50-85 mm Pfund)Amber (85-114 mm Pfund)

Warm amber, clear and bright, with a slightly reddish cast in older honey.

On setting: Slow to set; a fine light-brown grain when it does.

Texture
Thick but pourable; Runny
Crystallisation

Slow — months before it starts to granulate

Fructose-leaning and slow to granulate, which suits a honey produced and sold in a hot climate where crystallisation is rarely encountered anyway.

Typical composition

Moisture
16–20% (typically 18%)
Fructose
38–44% (typically 41%)
Glucose
28–34% (typically 31%)
Glucose-to-fructose ratio
0.66–0.85 (typically 0.76)
pH
3.6–4.4 (typically 4)
Electrical conductivity
0.2–0.6 mS/cm (typically 0.35 mS/cm)

These are typical ranges assembled across published work, not measurements of a specific honey. Moisture runs higher than in temperate honeys, which is normal for honey ripened in a humid tropical climate and is why prompt handling matters more there.

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

Where it comes from

Floral source
Dimocarpus longan, in the soapberry family alongside lychee and rambutan. The flowers are small, pale yellow and borne in large panicles.
Origins
Northern Thailand — Chiang Mai and Lamphun in particular — plus Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian in China, and northern Vietnam.
Origin pages

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

Harvest
February to April (northern hemisphere)

A short intense flow, and one of the earliest of the year in the region.

The bees
Worked by both the introduced western honey bee and the native Asian honey bee, Apis cerana, which is still widely kept across the region. Longan orchards are a major destination for migratory beekeeping in Thailand.
Usual processing
Spun (centrifugally extracted), Coarsely strained, Filtered

What to do with it

Excellent in tea and in Southeast Asian desserts, and strong enough to be used in marinades. Its aromatics are heat-sensitive, so add it late.

At the tableIn hot drinksDessertsDrizzlingMarinadesGlazing and roasting

Pairings

  • Jasmine and oolong teaClassic

    The regional pairing; both are floral-aromatic and neither needs to give ground.

  • Sticky rice and coconut dessertsClassic

    The honey supplies caramel and perfume to something built on texture and fat.

  • Ginger and lime

    Sharp aromatics against a musky sweet one, which stops it becoming cloying.

Pairing pages this honey appears on

Selected by this honey’s own recorded intensity, flavour families and uses rather than by anything written above — each page prints the rule that put it there.

Where this honey sits in the catalogue

History and traditional use

  • Widely used across southern China and Thailand as a tonic honey, on the strength of the longan fruit's long-established place in Chinese medicine rather than on any evidence about the honey.

Traditional use records that people have done something, and for how long. It is not evidence that it works.

Sources

  • HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
  • Analytical approaches to honey authentication — Peer-reviewed food-analysis literature · Peer-reviewed article

How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.

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