Saffron Honey

You will notice that sometimes your honey will become thicker and/or cloudy, and a coarse sugary texture forms on the bottle. The crystallization of honey can take place due to the involvement of various factors and is a completely normal and unalarming phenomena. Real, untampered, and natural honey has glucose and fructose present inside of it, these bind together and form the little crystals resulting in harder honey.

The crystallization process is natural and has little to no effect on the honey other than new textures, densities, and colouring. Crystallised honey is perfectly safe for consumption and certainly does not mean that it has gone bad. Nutritionally, there is nothing wrong with crystallized honey. However, after honey crystallizes, it becomes highly viscous, making it difficult to remove from its container and challenging to work with.

Each flower species has a different proportion of glucose to fructose in its nectar, and glucose crystallizes more readily than fructose, making the ratio of glucose to fructose in honey an important factor to consider. Honey essentially is made up of 70 percent Sugar and 20 percent of water, and the other 10 percent are micro-nutrients. Glucose essentially can be understood as sugar and its excess presence makes honey susceptible to crystallisation, whereas the content of fructose is known to be normal in honey.

Usually, honey can also crystallise if the water content in it is above 24/25 percent. During the process of filtration if air bubbles which form are not destroyed, they can stay trapped in the bottles and can further lead to the crystallization of honey. The timeframe for the air bubbles to set in honey is 24 hours. Crystals are more likely to form in colder temperatures and therefore the climate in which the honey is consumed in affects its properties. The remnants of pollen found in honey contribute to the binding process which makes the honey further susceptible to crystallisation, although it is a healthy sign that the honey is pure.

Last Forest prides itself on its honey filtering process which extracts impurities, although in rarer cases honey can crystallise if impurities such as dust particles or wax bits are residing in the honey.

A tip to combat the crystallization of honey: In order to de-crystallize honey, all you need to do is fill a large bowl with warm water and let your honey sit in it until all the crystals dissolve.

A tip to embrace the crystallization of honey: By using the hard crystallized honey to your advantage, you can spread it on breads, biscuits or other goodies like a jam or marmalade.

Honey as a consumable product has multiple health benefits and medicinal properties. These include aiding the nursing of wounds and burns, improving heart health, building immunity through nutrient content and is an overall traditional remedy adopted by indigenous communities to treat many aliments.

The health benefits for different types of honey are listed below:

Nilgiri Sweet Honey: This healthy delicacy has been used by Indigenous communities for centuries to prevent cough and cold while building immunity.

Pollen Honey: This honey is naturally rich in pollen, which is believed to have a multitude of benefits including for allergies, heart, and liver function.

Jamun Honey: Naturally bitter in taste, this wild honey is sourced from bees that feed on flowers of the Black Jamun (Syzigium cumini) tree. It is believed that the bees impart the benefits of jamun, such as blood sugar regulation, into this honey.

Cinnamon Honey: Cinnamon is believed to have antiviral, antibacterial, and pain relief properties.

Ginger Honey: Ginger is believed to address indigestion, throat ache, nausea, or migraines.

Nutmeg Honey: Nutmeg is believed to have pain relieving and detoxification properties and is traditionally used to aid digestion.

Thyme Honey: This wild honey is infused with homegrown thyme, an herb believed to be rich in vitamins C and A, with benefits for stomach, digestion, and mood.

Rosemary Honey: This wild honey is infused with homegrown rosemary, an herb traditionally cherished for its anti-inflammatory properties, improvement of blood circulation, and benefits for hair.

Cardamom Honey: Cardamom is believed to reduce blood pressure, increase circulation, and be rich in antioxidants.

Saffron Honey: Saffron is lauded as a luxury for not only its distinct taste but also its antioxidant properties.

Pepper Honey: Pepper is believed to aid digestion and throat ache.

Last Forest honey is sourced straight out of wild beehives tucked away in forests within neighbouring regions.

The honey is naturally and sustainably collected directly by honey hunters who trudge on tall cliffs in search of suitable extraction sources.

After paying obeisance to the local deity, the men set out into the forest, armed with the tools of their trade – rope, machetes and baskets to collect the honey. They are especially adept at extracting honey from the hives hidden among the cliffs that soar hundreds of feet into the sky. The rope fastened, the designated climber descends into the depths of the cliff, seeking the hives.

Once he finds a rich source of honey, swinging precariously on the rope ladder, he builds a smoker to agitate the bees into abandoning the hive, taking care not to destroy any of the bees. Blinded by smoke and swarmed by angry bees, he extracts the honeycomb and begins his long climb up.

Once the bees have fled the hives temporarily, the honey hunters go on to extract the honey, and beeswax from the combs.

There are many incentives of purchasing wild honey in contrast from regular cultured honey such as it being sustainably collected and sourced from wildflowers.

The scope of foraging for the bees is much larger in comparison to cultured bees, as the areas and locations are widespread and not limited geographically. The advantage of foraging from different wild flowering species is that the pollen content is much higher, and it is found that the nutritional value in wild honey is higher.

Wild honey is known for its medicinal properties as well. The unique nature of wild unprocessed, raw and untampered honey makes it all the more special and rarer, putting it on the forefront of honey types.

Last Forest honey is not officially organically certified but is registered under PGS Wild, an accreditation which primarily caters to wild produce.

We have opted for PGS Wild and not an organic certification because our honey is collected from different regions and farms, who may not necessarily follow organic practices resulting in wild produce harvested from inorganic regions.

Organic certifications are an often a tedious process to acquire, although Last Forest is not certified on paper it is as organic as it can get.

Honey does not expire and can enjoyed for years to come. It does not have an expiry date if it is cared and stored for properly according to instructions. Unfiltered honey ensures that most of the necessary nutrients are retained throughout the period of consumption as honey contains numerous vitamins and enzymes. Most often the organisms which can spoil food do not survive in honey. The magical reason for the longevity of honey lies in its biological make up as the sugar and low pH content constitute its lifespan.

Precautions:

Do not directly refrigerate and heat honey.

Do not use a wet spoon or your finger when taking it out of its bottle.

Do not store honey in a plastic container instead use a glass bottle.