The books / Forage and the Nectar Flow / chapter 20 of 21
Creaming by the Dyce method
All chapters
- 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
Creaming does not undo crystallisation. It controls it, so that instead of coarse grit the honey sets in crystals too fine to feel on the tongue.
The method is Dyce's and it has three steps:
- cool the liquid honey quickly to somewhere between 16 and 24 degrees
- blend in finely crystallised seed honey at about one part seed to ten parts honey by weight, which is the middle of Dyce's own range of 5 to 20 percent
- then hold it undisturbed at around 14 degrees for one to two weeks while the fine crystal grows through the batch. Rape is the obvious candidate, since it was going to set anyway.