“Raw – Unfiltered & Unheated”

This Orange Blossom honey is not processed in any way.

All of your “store bought” honey is heated for ease of processing and to retard the natural crystallization process inherent in honey. Of course, this heating process (to 150 degrees F) destroys the natural enzymes.

While heated “store bought” honey is also filtered to remove any impurities this “natural” or “Raw” honey is allowed to “sit” whereby 99.99% of the obvious impurities rise to the surface. Honey must be heated in order to be filtered effectively. Our unheated honey is drawn from the bottom of the tank thereby leaving the impurities behind.

No virus or bacteria can live in the high sugar medium which is honey.

How To Keep Honey

DO NOT REFRIGERATE HONEY – All honey has a natural propensity or tendency to crystallize or to “go to sugar.” Cold temperatures hasten this process. Therefore, keep all honey in a warm place.

If Orange Blossom Honey is left in an area where it is effected by natural atmospheric temperature changes typically it will tend to crystallize in the first winter. The best way to keep Orange Blossom honey from “going to sugar” is again, to keep it stored in a warm place.

IN CASE YOUR HONEY CRYSTALLIZES, the only sure method to return it to its natural fluid state is to place it into a double boiler and to heat it until it is again fluid. (with due care, a microwave oven will work) If possible, avoid heating honey. The effect of heating honey is to darken it and to diminish to some degree its flavour and quality.

NEVER LEAVE HONEY UNCOVERED – Honey absorbs moisture from the atmosphere. Honey should contain less than 18% moisture. Above 18% any honey will ferment and ruin. Therefore, simply keep your honey well sealed in an air tight container.

How We Process Our Honey

Honey can be a natural product or it can be processed in a determined way. Those are the two options.

NATURAL AND RAW HONEY:

The process we use to produce “raw and natural” honey is called “reverse settling.” There is no heating. The honey is placed (by hand power) into 55 gallon honey drums and allowed to sit in place for at least three weeks. 99.9% of any impurities will rise to the top and then the honey is drawn from the bottom of the drum by way of a honey gate (2 inch valve). The process is as simple as that. By not being heated the honey is as “alive” in its natural makeup as it was before the honey was robbed from the hives.


 

PROCESSED HONEY:

All “store bought” honey is processed by packers by way of heating, filtering and blending. The heating is necessary to transform the naturally thick honey into a more fluid state so that mechanical pumps are able to efficiently move it along through pipes from one level of the process to another. The process includes filters that remove any “impurities” that would tend to diminish the perfect clarity that packers desire. Then the filtered and hot honey is blended with other, sometimes lesser quality honey, to produce a product that fits the standard that the packer desires.

Often (too often) USA honey is blended with imported honey which is cheaper. A packer is allowed by law to declare a honey a certain type (for example, Orange Blossom) if at least 51% of the final blended honey is derived from any source that declares that his honey is of that type. In other words, 49 % of a named processed and bottled honey can be from any source. That is the reason that store bought honey many times fails the taste test that a discriminating consumer may make. To say it another way, “It just doesn’t taste like it should.”