The books / Forage and the Nectar Flow / chapter 19 of 21
Crystallisation is physics, not spoilage
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- The two-kilometre circle
- Why six kilometres costs more than it brings
- Three and a half kilos of nectar
- What a flow actually is
- Maple, willow and the first dandelions
- Fruit blossom and hawthorn
- The main flow: black locust and clover
- Linden in July
- The gap in the middle of the year
- Goldenrod and the winter stores flow
- Ivy, the last flow
- Oilseed rape, the flow that sets in the comb
- What makes a jar monofloral
- Putting a super on at the start of a flow
- Pulling it at the end
- Reading a capping percentage
- Eighteen point six percent
- Honey that ferments
- Crystallisation is physics, not spoilage
- Creaming by the Dyce method
- A year of varieties and what each is worth
Honey is a supersaturated sugar solution, which is to say it holds more sugar than it comfortably can. Glucose is the less soluble of its two sugars, so over time it comes out as crystals while the fructose stays dissolved.
How fast depends on the ratio between them:
- under 1.11 fructose to glucose is the fast band
- 1.11 to 1.33 the medium one
- above 1.33 slow or effectively never
Temperature matters as much. Crystallisation runs fastest at about 14 degrees, and a store held between 10 and 16 will granulate. None of this is spoilage.