Seasoned Advice is a question and answer site for professional and amateur chefs. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I have bought two bottles of honey from a single honey producer. One bottle before, and one recently.
Which honey is of higher quality? What might be the difference cause?
As to your second question:
What might be the difference cause?
The simple answer is: time and sugar content.
Natural bee honey is an over saturated sugar solution with some additional ingredients the bees pick up from the blossoms. Over time, especially if some of the water content evaporates, the remaining liquid cannot dissolve the amount of sugar that's already in the solution any longer. The liquid sugar is forced into a solid state and forms small crystals. That is the “rough texture” you observed in the lighter colored honey.
The darker honey will start crystallizing as well, but when exactly that process starts depends on the sugar and water content and on the variety of honey. Wikipedia states:
Within a few weeks to a few months of extraction, many varieties of honey crystallize into a cream-colored solid. Some varieties of honey, including tupelo, acacia, and sage, crystallize less regularly.
In that respect, I see no difference in quality between the two samples of honey. This is simply how natural honey behaves.
It's possible to dissolve the crystals in the lighter honey by putting the whole glass (without a lid) into a water bath / bain marie and gently heating the honey until it's liquid again. The sugar will start crystalizing again after a few weeks. Adding a few drops of water (and I mean individual water drops, else you risk turning the honey into sugar water) can keep the consistency smooth for longer.
It is impossible to say which honey has higher quality. The difference is likely to be due to the honey coming from different plants. Other sources of difference is in the processing done to the honey after gathering, the one which crystallized has obviously not been treated against crystallization, while the other either has such treatment or is made from a plant which doesn't tend to crystallize.
It is entirely possible that the two honeys are off different quality, but all we can tell from your question is that they are two different types.
Color and texture by themselves aren't indicators of quality in the honey. Quality comes from the diet of the bees, how well the bees are kept and how the honey is collected and processed. As the seasons change the food sources for bees change, the color and the taste of the honey depends on what the bees are gathering. Honey from the same hive can vary dramatically throughout the year. The only way to gauge quality is to taste it.
