Filtering Honey

[Japey Edge]

Hi everyone,

I want to pick your brains on how each of you go about filtering honey. I saw a video today of one guy who just squeezes mushed up comb and stuff through a paint filter and doesn't mind the odd bee leg in there.

I, probably wrongly, assumed running the honey through a stainless double strainer would be ideal - getting the big bits out but leaving that good good pollen in there. Should I incorporate a third step of a paint filter/muslin cloth/fine mesh kinda thing?

Are there any other methods?

[stechad]

I only ever use a double stainless sieve, keep the good bits in, never had any body parts get thru.

[AndrewLD]

A coarse strainer to get the lumps of wax capping / pollen out and a medium strainer. Oddly enough my medium strainer came as part of a Thorne's honey bucket that had a vacuum pump. Great idea but not a great success, the tube collapsed and the bucket started to split - still used but with a new tougher hose and bodge tape holding the bucket together. It did make for much faster straining.

That is plenty good enough for "Raw Honey" (I can hear the howls of complaint from the honey mafia already) BUT it is not good enough for show honey, which has to be polished with a fine filter or cloth. One of our show judges proclaims that a pair of ladies' tights is great for this but never cotton fabric or muslin because it leave tiny strands of fabric in the honey and they show up.

If I am extracting at ambient temperature I leave filtering out and just bucket it. Then when I want to bottle I put it in my Kochstar and heat it to around 35 degC for 24hrs, when it filters easily. No higher than 40 degC for any length of time (max 48hrs??) or you run into Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) level problems.

Never got into showing honey but I can see a distinct advantage of being able to put "2019 Cambridge Honey Prize Winner" to boost sales.

[AndrewLD]

Part 2....
Tried pressing out comb using straining bags and a fruit press - messy disaster. Often seen in "backwoods" cabin videos. Not recommended
Tried heating out OSR honey but the honey always seemed to taste waxy to me - not recommended.
This year I am going to try putting OSR into my Kochstar melter (new toy this year). Early attempts have been very promising and the wax discs are great but of course the heated honey has to be sold as "Bakers' Honey"

[NigelP]

Standard stainless steel two tiered system direct from extractor into buckets.
Remelt at 45C overnight and 200 micron bucket filter before bottling. As they have a large surface area the honey goes through them very quickly. If it doesn't then it's not fully remeleted.
https://tinyurl.com/yagsrpk2

[NigelP]

. No higher than 40 degC for any length of time (max 48hrs??) or you run into Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) level problems.

Worth noting max HMF levels legally allowed in Honey are 40mg/kg.

Time at different temperatures required to generate 30mg/Kg below.

30C 100-300 days
40C 20-50 days
50C 4-10 days
60C 1-2.5 days
70C 3-5 hours
80c <2 hours

[AndrewLD]

Useful - I might go a little higher with my OSR then but I was basing my advice on a table on honey temperatures published in the BBKA News in 2006. Perhaps 49 degC for re-liquefying OSR honey but you risk complications will comb collapse at 41 degC and tainting the honey with wax. I believe that the HMF level in the regs is simply an easy flag to Food Standards that the honey has been heated (I think the limit for bakers honey is 80mg?

If you heated honey to the temperatures near the bottom of your list then I wouldn't want it and how ordinary beekeepers avoid altering natural enzymes etc (see below) is going to be a mystery to those without analytical equipment that probably only the NBU has. In the practical world of beekeepers without access to analytical machines, the rule of thumb I have quoted is a good one that will keep you out of trouble if your honey is analyzed.

It would be very tempting to heat honey to around 71 deg C to prevent fermentation but then you have to be able to cool it quickly and very few hobby beekeepers can do that, probably few own even a food probe thermometer......

I think this boils down to practical versus theoretical. I know plenty of beekeepers who heat out OSR honey and I suspect they overheat it in the process but it's not something I would contemplate unless I label it bakers honey.

The Honey Regulations 2015 state:
SCHEDULE 1Compositional criteria

8. It must not—
(d)have been heated in such a way that the natural enzymes have been either destroyed or significantly inactivated.
9. Paragraph 8 does not apply to baker’s honey.

[NigelP]

Not my list Andrew, was published by White, Kushnir and Subers in 1964.
https://digital.libraries.psu.edu/digital/collection/honeyboard/id/74/

Are you saying that your OSR honey has already set in the comb and you are trying to extract from there....good luck with that one.
I'm talking about already extracted OSR honey that has set in the bucket and needs remelting before I turn into soft set honey. All my OSR honey is made into soft set and then jarred.
I think you would need to be an idiot to heat your honey anywhere near those top temp's. I never go beyond 50C max overnight. This temp causes no damage to any of the heat labile enzymes etc which require a much higher temperature to be affected.

[AdamD]

I use a stainless steel double strainer and that's it. Ideally before the honey goes into buckets but for OSR that's 'on the turn' the honey goes straight into a bucket as it would not get through a filter at that time.
Set honey goes int a warming cabinet at 45 - 50 degrees for long enough to go runny again - for a large bucket it's 2 days for the whole of it to go runny. Un-sieved honey is poured into my extractor for it to run out through the double strainer.

The RAW honey question is often asked by purchasers although there is no definition of what RAW actually means. I say that I do not filter the honey, I just sieve it, which makes them happy enough. For temperature, I explain that I will warm it if necessary but don't overheat. Customers would soon complain if their honey was spoon-bendingly hard.

[AndrewLD]

Are you saying that your OSR honey has already set in the comb and you are trying to extract from there....good luck with that one.
I'm talking about already extracted OSR honey that has set in the bucket and needs remelting before I turn into soft set honey. All my OSR honey is made into soft set and then jarred.
I think you would need to be an idiot to heat your honey anywhere near those top temp's. I never go beyond 50C max overnight. This temp causes no damage to any of the heat labile enzymes etc which require a much higher temperature to be affected.

If it is set in the comb - I agree it is a waste of time trying to extract. If I put it in the Kochstar it's to melt the wax and then use the honey as cooking honey / mead. Too caramelised to taste good on its own.
I was pleasantly surprised how much uncapped honey I got out at 16.5% so I only have a couple of supers to melt.