Snowberry honey
Mild and clean with a soft floral sweetness and a faint green note — pleasant and unassertive.
A pale summer honey from snowberry, the low shrub of North American woodland edge and riverbank whose white berries persist through winter. It is a minor but genuine varietal in the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies, and it comes from a plant that is far better known as a hedging shrub than as a nectar source.
Flavour and aroma
- Aroma
- light florals, fresh green, hay
- Flavour
- soft floral, light caramel, faint green
- Finish
- Short and clean.
- Intensity
- Mild
- Sweetness
- Sweet
- Bitterness
- None
- Acidity
- Moderate
Colour, texture and crystallisation
- Colour
- Extra white (8-17 mm Pfund)White (17-34 mm Pfund)Extra light amber (34-50 mm Pfund)
Pale straw, clear and bright.
On setting: Sets to a fine pale cream.
- Texture
- Runny; Soft set; Creamed
- Crystallisation
Moderate — granulates over a few months
A moderate fine set.
Typical composition
- Moisture
- 15–19% (typically 17%)
- Fructose
- 36–41% (typically 38%)
- Glucose
- 30–36% (typically 33%)
- pH
- 3.6–4.4 (typically 4)
- Electrical conductivity
- 0.1–0.4 mS/cm (typically 0.25 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
- Symphoricarpos albus and related species, snowberry, on woodland edge, riverbank and hedgerow across northern North America.
- Origins
- Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alberta.
- Origin pages
Resolved from both directions — origins this honey names, and origins that name it.
- Harvest
- June to August (northern hemisphere)
A summer flow, running longer than most northern shrub crops.
- The bees
- Snowberry is a genuinely good bumblebee plant, with small pink bell flowers suited to bees that can push in. Its long flowering makes it a useful bridge in the northern summer.
- Usual processing
- Raw, Coarsely strained, Spun (centrifugally extracted), Creamed (seeded and controlled-set)
A minor varietal rarely separated in commerce, and usually a component of northwestern wildflower honey.
What to do with it
An everyday honey with nothing to accommodate.
At the tableSpreadingBakingIn hot drinks
Pairings
- Toast and butter
Straightforward.
- Fresh cheeses
Both mild.
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
Snowberry berries are toxic to people and were used by several Pacific Northwest peoples as soap and medicinally rather than as food. The honey is unaffected by this.
Sources
- HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Tools for choosing and using honey
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- Honey substitute calculator
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- Storage guide
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