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I have purchased Safa raw honey. They have written that their honey is:

100% Pure & Raw
Raw
Unheated
Unfiltered

This honey is runny and dark in colour (almost black). It has some residue in it.

This website shows raw honey that looks like a paste:
http://www.hibeautiful.net/directory/skin-benefits-of-raw-honey

Have I been fooled? Can raw honey look dark and runny?

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  • For my geographic location, wildflower honey (vs clover) is very dark. Color is more related to the source of the nectar and pollen. Sep 28, 2017 at 16:12

3 Answers 3

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That seems normal.

All the "raw" means is that it was extracted from the honeycomb without significant heating. It's liquid to start with in the honeycomb, so it's normal for it to still be liquid when you get it. I don't know if I'd call it runny, it should still generally be a pretty thick, slow-flowing liquid, but it's not a paste.

The color is mostly just a function of what the bees were gathering. Dark is often more flavorful, probably a good thing, but depends on your tastes. Mass-produced honey is very often lighter, and wildflower honey (where the bees just get whatever they want) is very often darker.

I've definitely seen plenty of raw, unfiltered honey that looks liquid and roughly the darkness of the raw honey you bought, judging by the picture in the linked page. If anything, it's probably more common to find dark unfiltered honey, because the filtering can lighten it up a bit.

The "paste" you linked to looks like it's crystallized/creamed. There are a lot of tiny sugar crystals, making it thicker and opaque, which tends to make it look a bit lighter too. (It's not completely smooth, like "perfect" creamed honey, but it's a lot smoother than uncontrolled crystallization, so I think it's fair to call it creamed.) Raw, unfiltered honey does crystallize more easily, because it has more imperfections in it to jump-start crystallization, so it's not entirely surprising to see raw honey in that form. But raw honey certainly doesn't have to be that way.

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  • Raw, unfiltered honey does crystallize more easily, because it has more imperfections in it to jump-start crystallization Thanks, Well this honey did NOT crystallize at all in last winter, whereas the normal pasturized honey did. Is there a way to make sure that this is raw honey? Sep 28, 2017 at 6:12
  • @Aquarius_Girl "more easily" doesn't mean "will crystallize for sure". If you're lucky it still won't, especially if it doesn't go through a ton of temperature swings. There's a bit of luck involved. Also, if it actually is runny, not just liquid, as in a bit higher water content, maybe not fully saturated, that'd also make it less prone to crystallization. And, no there's no way to make absolutely sure at home that it's raw, but if it smells fragrant, that's a good sign. It also doesn't exactly matter, as long as you like the honey.
    – Cascabel
    Sep 28, 2017 at 6:52
  • Thanks, but I just wanted to make sure that I was eating what I paid for. Sep 28, 2017 at 10:25
  • @Aquarius_Girl - keep in mind, also, the "paste" that you referenced is being used for skin application, to it's likely that they took their original raw honey and left it open for additional evaporation to encourage crystallization, because that "paste" consistency is probably better for topical use. Crystallized <> raw. Theirs, for their application, just happens to be offered that way. Sep 28, 2017 at 16:10
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Honey can range from light to very dark; from what I have in stock at the moment

four bottles of honey

one may be able to see that the rightmost trends towards almost black. These samples are all from bees in the pacific northwest area.

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It seems the further into the tropics you go the thinner honey gets. Dark honey normally has more pollen in it. So what flowers did it come from? But black honey I have not seen. Dark brown yes. If set does some bees wax form in the honey? Is there parts of bees in the honey? Unfiltered is not normal. Taste varies from week to week when fresh honey is bought. Or hive to hive in honey. Our honey they get a hive. Put it in a 5 gal. bucket. & the boys walk down the street selling it. You stick your finger in & taste it before buying. Bring your own jar. The comb is mashed &the honey filtered threw a cotton cloth into your jar. Some wax is seen in the honey. Light to dark brown in color. Not to many particals in it. Some wax. It almost sounds like you bought cooking honey. We normally use the dark honey in cooking.

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