What is Velvet Honey?

When we first released Velvet Honey products we just called them “honey.” That was a mistake. The most common customer feedback was “what’s wrong with the honey?” 😬

Nothing is wrong with the honey. I hope for a moment of your time to explain why.

Velvet Honey is most accurately called, “controlled-crystallization-for-small-uniform-crystal-structure-honey.” As no one exclaims that in joy, we call it Velvet Honey. Most beekeepers call it “cream honey.”  It contains no dairy, but customers make split-second decisions. We don’t use names like “honey butter” for the same reason. To be clear: Velvet Honey is only honey, except for cranberry, lemon, chocolate…

Now, this brings up an issue. Does Velvet Honey contain velvet, a fabric? No, Velvet Honey contains no fabric. Velvet Honey is honey.

I love bees, but I am not a fan of honey. To me, sweet is better when contrasted with another flavor. Contrast makes the world vivid. We know a quality more intimately if we know its opposite. If you are happy and have always been happy, your happiness begins to take on a dim, glib, inauthentic quality. You are not happy. You are a Stepford wife. Your grin freaks all of us out.

If you know struggle, a different happiness is possible. Knowing struggle, while holding a loved one close or sharing joy with a child suddenly something different is present. It is a singular feeling. It calls attention to itself. It is more inward and serene. This happiness is not only a momentary, fortuitous brain physiology. It is the satisfied mind of a reflection upon a life of contrasts. You are grateful for your despairs. This is the paradox of happiness. To be happy, you need purpose. To find purpose, you need pain.

It is similar to tasty things across culinary traditions. No one delights in the sugar, cacao fat, or cacao bitters alone. But, put all three together and you have chocolate. And there ain’t nothing wrong with that. Drew’s Honeybees applies this wisdom of the ancients to honey: to know the goodness of something, know its contrast.

You can’t combine the best of worldly agriculture with liquid honey. Honey is very dense, about 1.4 times denser than water. Honey’s high density pushes all other ingredients to the top of the honey. Instead of a mixed product, you’d have honey with whatever you added frothed atop.

Do not add water to honey. Honey does not spoil in part due to its very low water content, about 16-18%. There is too little water for the dormant yeasts in honey to reproduce and spoil. Most ingredients have water content that would imperil honey's natural microbial stability.

To add ingredients 1) the honey must be solid and 2) the ingredients must be nearly waterless.

The good news is that nearly all honey crystallizes over time. Honey has proportionally higher glucose to fructose content. Corn syrup has proportionally higher fructose to glucose content. Fructose is stable dissolved in water. Glucose is not. This is why honey crystallizes and corn syrup does not. If you bought honey that doesn’t crystallize you likely bought an adulterated good. Honey is one of the most adulterated foods on the planet.

To make Velvet Honey, we harness the physical properties of honey. Honey has this cool property where it multiplies crystals within it. Each crystal replicates the form of the crystal that initiated it. It’s like a zombie outbreak. Each unit begets more units like it. In this way crystals spread throughout the honey in all directions until they interlock, rendering the liquid a velvety solid.

Another way to imagine the bloomin’ crystals is to picture a dark corner of a dark night sky. Slowly move your gaze to the Milky Way. Points of light gradually illuminate the dark. The points of light increase in number until the points of light interlock. The sky is a milky haze. This is similar to what happens in your Velvet Honey. The points of light (sugar crystals) increase in number until they interlock, rendering the sky milky (and your honey a solid).

When honey crystallizes in an uncontrolled manner, the sugar crystals are large. The honey feels gritty. Customers like it less. But, be it said, at least you have genuine product. If you want honey that does not crystallize you want corn syrup. Ain’t nothing wrong with corn syrup (well, there is, but this ain’t the place.) 🤷

For a velvety solid honey with a desirable crystal structure you take advantage of honey’s replicating property. We add a small amount of honey with a small, desirable crystal structure. Honey’s physical properties do the rest. Just like a zombie outbreak.

We got work to do to bring down prices and further the delightful things. We are grateful to you for making us possible. You make the delight of rollickingly contrasting honeys possible. You make better beekeeping possible. You realize the better human outcomes of better packaging.

One more thing: this is our honey. That ain’t any easy, breezy marketing mistruth. I am with the blooms and the buzz from the spring lusting forth to the bees’ ballsy winter survival feat. That’s very uncommon in consumer products. That dichotomy–the farmers and the consumer goods folk who sell farmers’ goods–hurts farmers.

I don't know where this all goes. If the good people in their wisdom see fit to elevate us from the background I will then be as I now am, a farmer. I care too much to sell out, to grinningly go along with what doesn’t serve us. I see the good things that big brands just don’t care to do. Well, I do.

Check out Honey: An Insider’s Guide to the Good Stuff to learn how honey altered human history.