Honey and honey ale

Honey is the best.  It's great to cook with, comes in all kinds of subtle flavours and buying local honey is  good for bees.

Monofloral honey is the name for those types of honey which are (predominately) made from the nectar harvested from one type of blossom.  Some of the interesting ones are as follows (I've drawn a lot of this information from the Wiki site, linked above).

Acacia is lemon yellow to almost colourless, aromatic and light tasting. Acacia honey is actually from a false acacia, Robinia pseudoacacia, commonly known as black locust, a tree native to eastern North America and widely planted in Europe.  Another very light honey is lime (linden) blossom (Tilia americana) which is water-white or pale, although its coloring depends on the time of collection. 

Although genuine monofloral clover is rare (most light, mild-flavored honeys are mixed and called clover for the retail trade) the real deal is white to pale and has a waxy aftertaste.  In Yorkshire heather honey is produced by taking the bees up onto the moors in the summer months to gather the nectar from the banks of purple heather.  It is a white, aromatic honey a little like clover.  Other honeys produced in the UK are apple blossom, cherry blossom and hawthorn.

Lavender is a lovely woody and floral honey, light yellow in colour and produced mainly in France and Spain (as is Rosemary).  I've seen Lavender honey on sale in Casa Brindisa.  Another herb honey is Sage (Salvia), (which never crystallizes) and wild thyme which is produced in Greece (thyme grows very well on baked, dry ground).  Pine honey is also produced in Greece and in Turkey.

See Heather Honey, Pine Honey, above. 

There are also some darker honeys: avocado gives a dark amber honey and chestnut is also a dark, yellowish brown and has one of the highest mineral contents of all honeys.  The mesquite tree (from the Sourthwest US) is also prized for its sweet-smoky smelling wood, primarily used in barbecues and meat smokers. The honey produced from its flowers also has this distinctive smoky aroma and is dark brown and viscous, remaining semi-crystalline even in hot weather.

However, the one on my shelf at the moment is Orange blossom honey.  This is produed in various countries including France, Mexico and Spain and is actually made from mixed citrus nectar not just orange. It is a thick, very sweet honey with a strong aroma.  It varies in colour from light amber to white.  The lighter color and milder flavor comes from years when there is a large harvest and the honey is little contaminated by other nectars.  is my current favourite.



Parisian lavender

Honey can also be made into ale, of which there are two I know.  The first is Fuller's Organic Honey Dew, which is a light summery ale, good for a picnic or a barbeque.

Fuller's Honey Dew ale

The second is Wells & Young's honey beer Waggle Dance.  I discovered this almost ten years ago while learning to coppice (the ancient art of managing hazlewoods which I decided to learn for reasons that now escape me).  It was rather hard work and also wet and damp, but the evenings were much cheered by a bottle of honey ale.  

 

The name waggle dance, incidentally, comes from the figure of eight dance bees perform in order to share information as to where they have found honey.