We are still months away from the 2014 honey harvest and there are a few bottles of honey left from 2013…but they have all started to crystallize. Most people know that you can re-liquify crystallized honey with warm water. I figured if warm water works, hot water will work better. I boiled a kettle of water then I placed a bottle of honey into a bowl with the hot water. The bottle, made of plastic, became… more plastic. It morphed from a classic beeline shape into a shorter amorphous round blob (see picture of bottles shown on edge). I can’t imagine that this improved the honey’s taste. Don’t do it.
This got me thinking. What is the best way to re-liquify honey? I did what most people do in a situation like this – I went to the Internet with questions. And I found a lot of really bad answers.
The first bad answer I found was from none other than the National Honey Board:
If your honey crystallizes, simply place the honey jar in warm water and stir until the crystals dissolve. Or, place the honey in a microwave-safe container with the lid off and microwave, stirring every 30 seconds, until the crystals dissolve. Be careful not to boil or scorch the honey.
If you have tried the first suggestion, you know that you’ll need to reheat the warm water a dozen times or more because honey has a low thermal conductivity – that means that it takes a long time for the warmed to reach the center of the bottle of honey. If you Google Re-liquify crystallized honey, you can discover many stories from people that followed the advice of using microwave ovens. Microwave ovens are notoriously uneven in their heating. Warning the reader to “be careful not to boil or scorch the honey” is like warning users of charcoal grills to be careful when adding gasoline to poorly lit fires – don’t do it.
There were other ideas for re-liquifying honey on the Internet. All just as bad:
- Put the honey in the oven with the oven light on. I doubt if this actually works until one minute after somebody absentmindedly turns the oven on for a pizza. After five minutes, that same person discovers a sticky, smoking mistake.
- Run the honey through a dishwasher cycle in the top rack. This may work for many dishwashers but mine heats the water to some temperature above 110 °F. That might be OK if you are using glass bottles and don’t mind darker, pasteurized honey.
- Place the honey in a 110°F chicken egg incubator. This sounded like a great idea until I imagined bottles of honey nestled with objects that recently emerged from a chicken’s bottom.
- Grossest suggestion: drop the honey bottles into your hot tub. Just be sure to wash off the oily scum that will coat the bottles from the perfumed, sweaty bodies of last weekend’s pool party.
Not everything on the Internet is bogus however. I found a really clear explanation of honey crystallization from my friend Khalil Hamdan. Everything he writes is clear and logical.
If you don’t know exactly what temperature you are heating the honey then you risk destroying its beneficial properties. You might get rid of crystals but you can also end up darkening the honey, changing the taste, and destroying the helpful enzymes in honey. Why is that important? That topic will be covered in a future post.
So what is a good solution for preserving the raw nature of honey when re-liquifying it? Just like good BBQ: keep the temperature low and heat it slow (long). There are several ways to do this:
- Put your bottles in a yogurt maker. They hold the temperature at 112 °F.
- My choice is the heated water bath of my Sous Vide cooker (see picture & Wikipedia). I put my bottles (glass and plastic) into the Sous Vide programmed to 110°F and in a few hours they are clear as a bell and I know that the water never deviated more than a degree from 110°F. You might balk at spending $300 for a Sous Vide but then you would be missing out on beef short ribs cooked medium rare (exactly 134°F) that melt in your mouth. Yes, you heard that right – pink yet the collagen of this tough piece of meat is transformed into velvety gelatin. Or a ribeye steak that is medium rare everywhere (not just in the center). You can even Pasteurize your own eggs.
- If you have neither yogurt maker or sous vide water oven, you can put the bottles into warm water but use as large a pot as possible and expect to change the water often and use a thermometer.
- And perhaps you are trying to sell honey that crystallizes rapidly and need to re-liquify more than a couple bottles. In that case, you need a real honey warmer. Here are three designs:
What are your ideas for restoring honey?
July 16, 2023 at 12:01 pm
This is news to me. You don’t want to heat it any more than is necessary for it to liquify but at 18% water content or below, your liquified honey is not going to spoil.
May 27, 2023 at 10:48 pm
I just poured the honey into a sauce pan and heated it on warm on the stove and stirred it occasionally until it all dissolved. This took about 20 min then I poured the warm liquid honey into canning jars. Tilted the lids until completely cooled (next day) then screwed on the lids.
March 7, 2023 at 9:38 pm
I was told not to warm more crystalized honey than you can use at the time. any truth to this?
October 24, 2022 at 3:10 pm
My Grandfather worked from 20 to 50 beehives for many years. Although I hoped to follow his interest, sting-allergies stopped me nearly dead. Our current interest in honey is home use… and restoring crystallized to liquid. Great discussions here.
October 24, 2022 at 2:52 pm
Some decades ago, when contemplating a profession in commercial beekeeping, I observed in an apiary extraction house in Oregon a barrel-blanket heating system the workers used. Basically an oversized electric heating pad, they would warm an entire 55 gallon drum of cystalized raw honey for days or weeks, to the desired flowable temperature. The commercial honey processors have developed other efficient methods of storage, including warm-room storage for the barrels or honey tanks. Speaking of honey darkening, my Grandfather (1883-1975) told of perfectly edible honey having been found many 1,000’s of years old in Egyptian pyramids. It was blacker than molasses.
October 3, 2022 at 4:33 pm
I’m going to give the Instapot a try, mine has a yogurt setting of 115 degrees, put the jar in on a trivet, that should be just about right.
June 25, 2022 at 10:20 am
Excellent website a lot of information keep it going 👍
April 9, 2022 at 10:17 pm
Leave it in a hot car 🚗
March 6, 2022 at 11:35 pm
I tried putting a 2lb plastic jar of crystalized honey in my vacola preserver with water almost up to the lid of the honey jar; I walked away for 2 hours, so I don’t know how long it took exactly, but it turned out great!
February 25, 2022 at 1:42 pm
Yes and…I’m not sure.
Yes, the honey should be ok for human consumption, but I would not feed black honey to bees.
I am less sure about a steamer. It will work. But note that much of the world is used to getting their honey gritty. They use more of it than we do in the US by putting it in their tea or baking.
October 29, 2021 at 2:24 pm
Added 1/2 oz. Water to 10 oz. Crystalized honey and it cleared. Waiting to see what happens.
October 4, 2021 at 5:34 am
I find myself in possession of a gal of dark amber/almost black honey that has some crystals in it that make it very gritty.
Q. Is it worth saving? It tastes good. It’s just a very weird color (Is that natural? It was in a sealed container)
Q. I have a steamer that I use for processing canning jars. Would that dissolve the crystals?
April 13, 2021 at 3:41 pm
I had 2 plastic bottles of partially crystallized honey that I wanted to liquify and I had read the cautions about using a microwave. I also have two 4 cup glass measuring cups. Filled both half full of water and put the first in the microwave for 2 minutes. Took it out, put the 2 honey bottles in that cup, lids off, and put the second cup in for 2 minutes. After the first time it only need 1minute each cup. In between I stirred the honey with a long wooden skewer. (Spoon wouldn’t fit). The whole process took maybe 10 minutes to liquify the honey to the point where I could transfer it to a wide mouth glass jar. Now I can use the honey, liquid or not, easily. I can also put the jar in pan of water on the stove next I want liquid! My moral – buy honey in glass containers if possible.
April 3, 2021 at 1:59 pm
Sure. Whatever works.
April 3, 2021 at 10:42 am
There is a type of microwave that works much better, it’s called an inverter. Panasonic is the only one that makes them as they hold the patent.
The problem with other microwaves is that when you run them at lower power settings they still run at full power but in cycles. For example at the 50% setting it runs full power for about 5 seconds, then it powers completely off for five seconds with only the fan running. Then full power for 5 seconds, etc. Even at the lowest power setting they still run full power for a second or two, then fan only for several seconds. You can hear the sound change as it cycles on and off, as well as notice the light dim a bit when the power cycles on.
During the few seconds of full power the food is being blasted, that’s why you can sometimes see cheese bubbling even on the lowest power settings. Then during the several seconds of fan-only operation the hot food is supposed to spread its heat to any adjoining food that didn’t get as much of a blast. So it’s understandable why this isn’t great for dissolving honey.
An inverter microwave on the other hand is able to run continuously at actual reduced power. This reheats food more evenly, and also avoids blasting it with high power. I have put plastic honey containers in at the lowest power setting, I run it one minute at a time and then check the honey, it just barely gets warm. After about three or four minutes it is dissolved nicely and is still just warm. Very easy to control the temperature. Another thing I do is prior to putting it in the microwave I pour a little bit of liquid honey into the container and shake it around, and I also shake it around after each minute of heating. This helps dissolve any crystals that are stuck to the sides of the container.
Purists may still object to using microwaves at all, but you may want to try an inverter microwave. Even if you find that you don’t like how it dissolves honey it’s still a good microwave for reheating food. One note is that setting the power level on the Panasonic is a little clunky, you don’t type in a number instead you press the power button repeatedly to lower the setting from 10 down to whatever you want. Unfortunately for power level 1 that means you have to press the power button ten times. What I do is set the cook time longer, like five minutes, that way I just have to hit the pause button to do the one minute checks and then I can press resume without having to enter the power setting again.
April 2, 2021 at 12:03 pm
is it ok to set honey jar in the sun to get rid of crystals
March 29, 2021 at 8:38 am
Good question. If you have a sous vide machine, you should be able to vacuum pack wax comb (carefully, no pressure) and then immerse it in a water bath below 140 degrees F. I have not done this yet as I don’t allow my comb to last that long.
Tom
March 29, 2021 at 8:32 am
Bob,
Crystallization occurs because of tiny sugar seed crystals or pollen. That is why some commercial honey is super filtrated – to extend shelf life. You may not want to super filter your honey since pollen is a good thing. But you might provide heat a little longer to insure that you dissolve the tiny sugar crystals that remain that you cannot see. The other thing is to learn to make creamed honey. The third option is to replace all local forage sources with a forage source high in fructose. Some honeys low in fructose, like cotton honey, are just gonna crystalize.
Tom
March 28, 2021 at 6:42 pm
I bought a 5 gallon bucket of sugared honey from a friend in California, it came completely sugared. Put it in a loose lidded jar in front of a heater that puts out a constant 110 degrees airflow for one full week rotating it regularly. 60% of the jar is crystal clear the other 40% remains sugared after stirring. Help? Bargainbobs@centurytel.net
March 1, 2021 at 7:40 pm
I like the air fryer idea. Ours has a dehydrator function. Going to try that next.
February 12, 2021 at 9:50 am
I find the advice to use 112°f or so to be valuable. That is the first thing I wanted to know.
However here is the second thing I want to know:
That works but the crystallization returns, maybe even quicker. I suspect that once the honey turns a factor/characteristic is set which persists even though heating has temporarily alleviated the crystallization. Of course I believe the factor is hydration. However temperature seems to be a factor as well.
What advice to prevent a quick re-occurance of crystallation?
October 5, 2020 at 1:40 am
Easy enough for me to say living somewhere warm, but I’ve had good success leaving the glass jars out in the sun at 90°F.
September 22, 2020 at 9:41 pm
What’s up, just wanted to say, I loved this article.
July 18, 2020 at 3:01 pm
The grocery store discounted their crystallized honey.
I bought all 15 0f the little bear plastic containers @ $1 each.
This summer I have watched the jars begin to liquify on the shelf. It is still a little grainy, but really good and so much fun to watch.
June 22, 2020 at 4:56 pm
How do I reconstitute honey bought in the comb?
April 2, 2020 at 7:14 am
Air fryer set temp to 120 put glass container with crystallized honey for 30 min sorted
April 2, 2015 at 5:07 pm
This is further to my comment above. This morning I tried liquifying my jar of crystalized honey using my slow cooker. I filled the cooker half way with water and inserted the jar with about 2 1/2 lbs of Canada 1 white honey. Set the cooker to low temperature for about 15 min than to hi for another 15 min to speed things up a bit. Back to low for another hour and a half and the honey was back to the golden liquid I had before. I don’t believe the honey temperature ever went high enough (and for a long enough time) to pasteurize the honey. As I mentioned, the color has not noticabley darkened, at all.
April 2, 2015 at 9:30 am
I am going to try using my slow cooker, set on low, of course! Let you know how it worked ( or did’nt!)