Towai honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

butterscotch, light blossom, beeswax, fresh cream

Flavour

butterscotch, clean sugar, light caramel, faint vanilla

Finish

Short and soft.

Flavour character

• Floral and fruity — floral
• Warm and cooked — buttery, caramel

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

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

Very pale, among the palest New Zealand honeys.

On setting: Sets to a fine white cream.

Texture

Runny; Soft set; Creamed

Crystallisation

Moderate, step 3 of 5, from very slow to very fast

Moderate — granulates over a few months; sets with a fine crystal.

Sets over a few months to a smooth fine grain, and is frequently sold creamed.

Typical composition

Moisture

15–18% (typically 16.5%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

0.9–1.1 (typically 1)

pH

3.7–4.4 (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. Low conductivity consistent with its pallor, and New Zealand honeys are unusually well characterised because of the regulatory attention manuka has attracted.

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

Where it comes from

Floral source

Weinmannia silvicola, of the northern North Island. Its close relative Weinmannia racemosa produces kamahi honey and flowers later.

Origins

Northland and the northern North Island.

Origin pages

• New Zealand
• Northland

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

Typical harvest

October to December (southern hemisphere)

Earlier than kamahi, and it opens the Northland native honey season ahead of the manuka flow.

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

The bees

Long racemes of small open flowers with easily accessible nectar, worked heavily by honey bees and by native birds. An apiary in Northland can take towai and then manuka from the same site in one season.

Usual processing

Spun (centrifugally extracted), Coarsely strained, Creamed (seeded and controlled-set)

Increasingly marketed as a named monofloral rather than blended into bush honey, driven by the same premium-native-honey market manuka created.

What to do with it

A mild breakfast honey. Its delicacy makes it a poor cooking honey and a very easy eating one.

At the tableSpreadingIn hot drinksDessertsBaking

Pairings

• Buttered toast

  Mild, creamy and easy — a straightforward breakfast honey.

• Yoghurt

  Acidity gives a very mild honey something to work against.

• Green tea

  Delicate enough not to bury a lightly brewed leaf.

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

The commercial separation of New Zealand's native honeys into named monoflorals is recent and was pulled along by manuka's success — towai, tawari and rewarewa were all bush honey until buyers started paying for the distinction.