Our honey starts out as nectar obtained from neighboring fields and woodlands. On South Mountain, nectar flows for little more than two months a year, its' season spreading from mid-April through most of June. Changing weather patterns, including shifts in our local microclimate, determine nectar availablity for each year's harvest. Accordingly, fluctuations in the tastes, colors, and textures of our final products occur from one season's harvest to the next. For this reason, we include an annual harvest date on each of our jars, marking their contents as belonging to a specified vintage. Our honeys mostly echo a medley of flavors flower-sourced from Russian olives, black locusts, tulip poplars, brambles, and clovers. Along with these, an eclectic assortment of native wildflowers adds notes of complexity to the sweetness.
At Scravel Creek Farm, we sell only raw, unfiltered honey. Conglomerate maufacturers, by contrast, pasturize and force-filter their honeys. And although these procedures render their products with a uniform transparency and a diminished tendency to crystallize, their tastes can be compromised owing to the temperatures used for pasturization. Raw honey, on the other hand, appears more translucent than its filtered counterpart, its' somewhat hazy appearance deriving from small granules of pollen; beeswax; and propolis, a plant resin mixed with wax and used by bees for sealing open spaces within their hives.
Please note that sooner or later, all raw honeys will crystalize. To reliquify crystalized honey, simply heat a pan of water to 150 degrees F or 65 degrees C. Remove the water bath from the heat and place the jar of crystalized honey in the heated water until it is liquified.
Do not refrigerate honey and do not feed honey to infants younger than one year of age.
Light Amber Honey
As the name implies, our light-amber honey appears lighter in color than our amber variety. The difference in shading results from differences in the nectars comprising each of the final products.
Our light-amber product features a delicate backgound tone, leaving the primary foreground sensation to its sugars. On the other hand, our amber honey sports a bolder, more nuanced profile in the foreground, relegating its sweetness to the background. Moreover, darker honies are generally thicker than lighter-colored varieties, and they usually provide higher concentrations of antioxidants and minerals.