Can Honey be too old?

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Shotgunwilly

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Good Time of Day all

I am thinking about making a cyser at some point this year. I have some honey that's a few years old does honey go bad at any point? I have attached images of the honey below
 

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Raw honey won't go bad. Crystallized honey is perfectly good. To decrystalize it just put it some 95°F water until it is liquid again, then use it as you would any other honey
 
I bought a sous vide widget just for that purpose -

View attachment 867201
Great investment! That's how I decrystalize my honeys, but I also cook with mine.
Just make sure to keep the water between the minimum and maximum water level lines or you run the risk of burning out the heating element (too low) or flooding the electronics (too high).
 
FYI, contrary to the popular myth honey can and does spoil. The main take away from the following rant is that honey is no different than other ingredients we use for our beer. For the best beer, you should use the freshest ingredients, not old stale ingredients. Old, even fermenting honey, is not dangerous in any way, you might even like it. The point is that it will not taste the same as when it was fresh. I don't use old off flavor hops and malt in my beer and I don't want to use old and off flavor honey in a beer when striving for a certain flavor profile. You don't need to read any further, it is a long honey rant.

The main cause of honey spoilage is fermentation. Honey taste will also change over time as volatiles and other flavor compounds will change akin to staling. All honey contains some water in which the sugars are dissolved. US grade A honey is required to have less than 18.6% moisture. All "raw" (meaning unpasteurized) and unfiltered honey has some yeast in it. The USDA honey hand book states that honey with a higher moisture content than 17.3% will ferment given enough time. The rate of fermentation, hence shelf life, is dependent on the initial yeast count, the moisture content and the storage conditions, meaning temperature etcetera. It has always perplexed me that the threshold for US grade A honey is 18.6% which is high enough to allow yeast growth. I suspect the main reason is because the lower the moisture content the thicker it is making it harder to serve.

US Grade A honey must meet several quality standards in addition to having less than 18.6% moisture
US Grade B honey must meet lesser quality standards in addition to having less than 18.6% moisture.
US Grade C honey has even lower quality standards and can have no more than 20% moisture. (if it is not pasteurized it can ferment quite quickly)

Prior to the health food craze most commercially packed honey was filtered and pasteurized to prevent it from spoiling. With the health food craze there was a demand for unprocessed and unpasteurized honey because the filtering and pasteurization denatured some of the enzymes believed to promote increased health in addition to altering its flavor.

If honey has less than 17.3% moisture, most organisms that can cause spoilage can not fully retain biologic activity likely due to the extreme osmotic pressure. It does not necessarily kill them but prevents them from being fully functional. In this case the honey does not ferment but will still change in flavor over time. If the moisture content increases for some reason in the future the yeast may become active.

Honey is a super saturated mixture of various sugars along with different flavoring compounds each of which is unique to the nectar source. Of the various sugars dextrose is the least soluble in water. As bees evaporate off excess water the honey becomes super saturated for some sugars meaning that the sugar concentrations exceed their natural solubility for the current water content at the honeys current temperature. If there are nucleation points in the honey, such as pollen, dust etcetera, the super saturated sugars may start to leave solution and crystalize on these points. This results in crystalized honey. Almost all honey will get some crystallization occurring given enough time. Honey high in glucose such as mustard and canola honey will crystalize very readily (side note: this can give beekeepers a real problem in that the honey may crystalize in the comb making it impossible to extract without melting the wax comb and all.) Honey lower in glucose such as Clover and Manuka can stay liquid and crystal free for very long. As the honey crystalizes, sugar is leaving solution result in in an increased moisture content of the remaining solution, hence an increased chance of fermentation. Heating the crystalized honey increases the the sugars solubility due to the higher temperature and reliquefies the crystals. Heat however does have an impact on other flavor compounds. If it is not heated sufficiently for long enough to fully dissolve even microscopic crystals you will retain a lot of nucleation points and it can recrystallize fairly quickly once it cools. Commercial cream or spun honey is created by purposely stimulating crystallization. The honey is first pasteurized to kill all yeast, seeded with glucose powder to provide nucleation points and cooled to optimize crystallization. This results in very fine crystals providing a butter like consistency.

Crystalized honey can be reliquefied by placing in a pan of warm to hot water. The warmer the water the less time it will take. I sometimes heat the jar without lid in a microwave for 15 to 30 second intervals stirring well between heating until it is liquid. Any time the honey is heated it will change some in flavor but it is still good. To reliquefy large quantities, honey marketers may use a hot box like oven to set the sealed jars in for several hours. I set mine in a 120 degree Fahrenheit over night or longer as required to liquify.

Saying that honey does not spoil and will last forever is untrue in the sense that it is not the same as when it was fresh. It is however true that any sugar that is not consumed by organisms during storage is available for brewing yeast to consume in your brewing process to increasing the alcohol content and lower the final gravity, just don't expect it to taste the same as when using fresh honey.
 
honey does not spoil. if the moisture content is too high, it can/will start to ferment. but I would say that's not honey as the bees have not finished drying it out prior to them capping the cells.

The low moisture level and high sugar ratio prevent anything from really growing in it.

vessels of edible honey have been found in the pyramids.

Any time you see an expiration date on honey...run away...
 
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