Honey 101
Color of Honey
Honey is classified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture into seven color categories using the pfund scale, with 0 being the lightest and 150 the darkest.
The color of honey is characteristic of its floral source due to minerals and other minor components.
Generally, lighter honeys have a milder flavor and are more often sought out for bottled consumer goods. Darker honeys have a more robust flavor and are more typical of ingredient and food service usages.
Honey can become darker as a result of storage, although at widely differing rates. This depends upon the composition of the honey (acidity, nitrogen, and fructose contents) and its initial color. Generally, the darkening of honey is temperature sensitive and occurs more rapidly when honey is stored at high temperatures.
Honey Flavor
There exist several hundreds of unique honey types and different taste of honey varieties from all over the world. Almost every country produces honey, each country has its main and special floral honey varieties and quality standards, but leading honey-producing countries are the USA, Canada, Australia, Argentina and India.
Some people judge honey quality by their floral origin, but each floral variety has its own distinct and original taste and texture. Flavors vary from very mild to strong and pungent.
As a general rule of thumb, light-colored honey is milder in taste and dark-colored honey, stronger. While table sugar has a sweet taste, honey has a flavor. Hold your nose when you're eating and you'll quickly draw a distinction between taste and flavor.
The unique aroma and flavor of each of the honey varieties are determined by the floral source, and at HoneyTree, our experienced organaleptic team tastes each and every incoming load of honey before approving it for use, to ensure a quality finished product.
