Cloudy honey

[brecks]

I filter my runny honey through double stainless steel (coarse and fine) filters and then through a 200 micron nylon filter. Despite this, the honey is always a little cloudy, which I assume is pollen. The honey tastes fine and I enjoy it as it is. However, some of my customers / potential customers prefer crystal clear honey. I tell them mine is raw honey with pollen not an industrial product.
Do any of you produce crystal clear honey and how do you filter it please?

[Jon]

I do the same as you brecks. I try an educate the customers that filtering the honey up to hells gates takes something beneficial out of it.

[brecks]

Thanks for your reply. I think the Marketing people would say that 100% of beekeeper respondents prefer cloudy honey. Sadly not so for the people I work with. I gave away lots of jars to work colleagues in the hope of getting some new customers but many commented on the cloudiness and did not buy more. Two did not eat it because they thought it was not safe!

[fatshark]

brecks … if you take a jar and heat it does the cloudiness disappear? Heat to ~45-50 centigrade perhaps. Just so long as it's warmed right through. I appreciate you might not want to do this, but it should get rid of small crystals that might pass through your filters. You only need to do this with one jar. I believe most 'show' runny honey has been treated like this.

My honey carries a label about crystallisation … standard sort of text available from Thorne's and others.

I should add that my usual treatment is filtering just like you describe.

[Adam]

honey can go cloudy before it starts to crystallise fully. Heated through it should then last some time, but not as long as shop-bought honey which is heated and filtered much more. In the back of my Mums cupboard I found some Nicaraguan honey with a bbe 2010 on the label - so years old. Still runny with no crystals.