Raw Honey vs. Processed (Liquid) Honey: What's The Difference??
Liquid Raw Honey tends to crystallize within 1-2 months of being extracted from the beehive. If you see anything claiming to be Raw Honey on the shelves of grocery stores that is more than 2 months past its production date, you can be well assured that it isn’t raw at all! It has most likely been pasteurized, filtered, both, or mixed with additives to keep it in its liquid form.
That is definitely not desirable!
Instead, to keep the Raw Honey soft and velvety, it can be churned. This is essentially Creamed Raw Honey. This is usually how raw honey makes its way into major grocery outlets so it can be distributed without getting overly crystallized.
Fun Fact: Creamed Honey is a uniquely Canadian invention! It was pioneered here as a way to keep raw honey as fresh as possible, for as long as possible, without needing to heat it and liquefy it!
The Liquid Honey Predicament
The liquid honey you find in grocery stores is more thank likely pasteurized. However, the pasteurization process for honey is not standardized like it is for milk or juice. In other words, it is not intended to defeat impurities in the honey.
Each brand has its method to pasteurize liquid honey - for example, a method known as “Flash Heating” is sometimes used, which renders the honey liquid and kills off a lot of the enzymes found in honey.
This is also not desirable! So why do they do it?
Large-scale honey processors heat the honey to its boiling point and then cool it repeatedly to ensure that it does not crystallize. This is to encourage sales because people generally don’t like to buy crystallized honey. We think this is a missed opportunity - pure, crystallized honey can be easily liquefied by applying a bit of heat to it, or it can be made into creamed honey with a household blender!
At Elias, we stand out from the rest by minimally pasteurizing the honey - in other words, we heat it just enough so it can be filtered properly while maintaining most of the beneficial enzymes, minerals and health-supporting compounds in the honey.
Unfortunately, that does mean it will crystallize over time, but it’s easy to turn it back into its liquid form with a little TLC.
Side Note: There are some exceptions to unpasteurized raw honey staying liquid - honey from Kashmir, in the northern regions of India/Pakistan, doesn’t seem to crystallize for many months…however, this is the exception, not the norm!
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Source: https://eliashoney.ca/blogs/ne....ws/raw-honey-vs-proc
