Put two jars side by side on a shelf. One is smooth and pale, the same from the top of the jar to the bottom, and it spreads like butter every time you open it. The other is one of ours, and it depends on the day. In one season it runs off the spoon in a thread. In another it sits firm, or a little grainy, or in two layers with a set band below and a runnier one above. Someone standing at that shelf could be forgiven for thinking the first jar is the finished product and the second is the one that still has something wrong with it.
It is the other way round, or rather it is neither. The first jar is usually creamed honey, and creamed honey is honey whose setting has been arranged for it. The second jar has been left to set on its own, in its own time. Both are honey. This note is about the difference, said plainly, and about why we make the second kind and not the first.
Two Jars on a Shelf
The smooth jar looks the way it does because it was made to. The texture is even because someone made it even, and it stays that way because the work was done before the lid went on. Our jar looks the way it does because nothing was done to it after it settled, and so what it does on your shelf is what the honey would do anyway. It may stay runny for a long while. It may firm up. It may set unevenly, which is the two-tone jar we described in the note on the two layers in the jar, and it may show a pale bloom on the glass, which is also nothing to worry about. None of these are faults. They are the honey behaving as honey does when it is left alone.
What Creamed Honey Is
Creamed honey deserves a fair description, so here is one. Honey that is going to set will set either way; the only question is how. Left alone, it forms crystals at its own pace and of its own size, and the result can be smooth or grainy, firm or soft, and different from one jar to the next. Creamed honey takes that uncertainty out. A little honey that has already set finely is added to a batch of runny honey, and the batch is stirred as it sets, so that the crystals stay small and the texture stays even. What comes out is the smooth, pale, spreadable honey that many people know and like. Whether it is warmed first depends on who makes it, and we will not guess.
It is worth being clear about what that makes it. Creamed honey is not fake, and it is not spoiled, and there is nothing hidden in it. It is a made texture, and making it well is a craft of its own. Plenty of people prefer it, and they are right to prefer what they prefer. We describe it here only so that the difference between that jar and ours is understood for what it is: a difference in what was done, not in what the honey is.
What We Do Instead
Nothing, or as close to nothing as a jar allows. The honey comes in from the apiary and is left to settle, which we described in the note on why honey is left to settle, and then it is jarred. It is not stirred, not seeded, not brought to any texture. What it does after that is the honey's own. If it sets, it sets because of what it is made of and where it has been kept, and the note on why honey crystallises walks through that in more detail than we need here. The short version is that setting is the ordinary behaviour of an unheated honey, and we do not arrange it, hurry it, or hold it back.
This is not a stand against creamed honey. It is simply where we have drawn our line. Our shelf is short, and everything on it is honey we can describe exactly, from the beekeeper to the jar. A texture that we made would be one more thing to explain, and we would rather the texture explain itself.
Why Ours Is Less Predictable
The cost of leaving the honey alone is that it becomes less predictable, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Two jars of the same honey can differ, and we have written about why in the note on why two jars can differ. One may still be running when the other has set. One may set smooth and another with a grain to it. The same jar can be one thing in the cool months and another in the warm ones.
What that unpredictability tells you is worth having. The texture on a given day is information about the flower the bees worked and the season they worked it in, and about where the jar has been sitting since. It is a reference, not a grade. A jar that has set is not a lesser jar, and a jar that has stayed runny is not a better one. They are the same honey at different points in a life that we chose not to interrupt.
If You Prefer the Smooth, Spreadable Kind
Some people read all of this and still want the smooth jar, and that is an honest preference and a fine one. Here is our honest answer to it. We do not make creamed honey, and we are not planning to. The nearest thing on our shelf is a jar of ours that has set, which spreads rather than pours and holds its shape on bread. It will not be as uniform as a creamed honey, because no one made it uniform, but it is the same idea arrived at the slow way.
And if a set jar is not what you wanted on a particular morning, it can be brought back to runny with a little warm water and patience, never with hard heat. The note on softening a jar that has set gives the method, and it is the only one we suggest. Beyond that, the texture is not ours to change. It belongs to the honey.
What "Raw" Also Means on Our Label
We have said before what the word raw means on a Haydara jar. It means unheated and unfiltered, and the note on what raw means on our label sets out both halves of that. This note adds a third half, if the phrase can be forgiven. Raw also means un-arranged. The texture you find when you open the jar is the one the honey chose, and no one chose it for you. That is a smaller promise than it sounds, and it is one we can keep every time.
Something is said of Imam Al-Laith Ibn Saad, that his generosity was without noise, and a jar that is allowed to set as it likes, with the word raw on the front to say so and nothing arranged for show, is a small instance of the same quiet. If you would like to know which of our honeys tends to sit firm and which tends to run, tell us whether you prefer a set jar or a runny one and what you mostly use it for, and we will tell you which of ours behaves that way. You can reach us on WhatsApp or through the website.