Why does a bottle of honey have a "best by" date?
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My understanding is that honey doesn't spoil. Is this strictly a marketing ploy?
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Bottled honey can crystalize, and the best by date is based on how fast this occurs. You can decrystalize honey by putting it in the sun or in warm water.
Interesting. I thought the crystalizing was more a factor of the temperature and exposure to light while the honey sits on the shelf.
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My understanding is that honey doesn't spoil. Is this strictly a marketing ploy?
I would not be surprised if this is to get you to throw it out and buy more. A company is not going to make much money on their honey if no one buys more.
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My understanding is that honey doesn't spoil. Is this strictly a marketing ploy?
I imagine it's just a legal requirement. Food producers don't want to be sued if someone gets sick eating 10 year old honey. Also, honey needs to be stored properly to last a long time.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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I imagine it's just a legal requirement. Food producers don't want to be sued if someone gets sick eating 10 year old honey. Also, honey needs to be stored properly to last a long time.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
Indeed. There is an expiry date on the salt I have in the kitchen.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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Interesting. I thought the crystalizing was more a factor of the temperature and exposure to light while the honey sits on the shelf.
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My understanding is that honey doesn't spoil. Is this strictly a marketing ploy?
Because if you leave us in the bottle for too long you will see us at our worst instead of at our best. :mad:
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Because if you leave us in the bottle for too long you will see us at our worst instead of at our best. :mad:
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
Ahhh yes. HTC speaks from personal experience!
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My understanding is that honey doesn't spoil. Is this strictly a marketing ploy?
The workaround to the expiration date is, when you get the jar home (it would take 20 years to get the label off it so I don't recommend that approach), pour the contents into any used 20w50 oil bottle. Preferably one that is not see-through (thus avoiding any talk of crystallizations/etc). You do own a lawn mower don't you?
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My understanding is that honey doesn't spoil. Is this strictly a marketing ploy?
As I understand most of the honey found in market is adulterated. Adding some other stuff like sucrose syrup to increase quantity. Once you add stuff to it there has to be an expiry date.
Zen and the art of software maintenance : rm -rf * Maths is like love : a simple idea but it can get complicated.
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As I understand most of the honey found in market is adulterated. Adding some other stuff like sucrose syrup to increase quantity. Once you add stuff to it there has to be an expiry date.
Zen and the art of software maintenance : rm -rf * Maths is like love : a simple idea but it can get complicated.
So, you are indirectly making a comparison between the honey business and the illegal drug business (stepping on the product). I never thought of looking at it that way, but you make a good point. :laugh:
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My understanding is that honey doesn't spoil. Is this strictly a marketing ploy?
Pure honey virtually never goes off. A problem is that some commercially-sold honey is actually a mix of honey and sugar-water and this can ferment (as can raw honey with too high a water content). Large-scale producers therefore put a short "best-before" to "encourage" consumers not to try it after that date, when the ruse might be discovered. Some hobby beekeepers will do similarly if they don't have the confidence that they've measured the water content correctly. Unfortunately some local trading standards departments also don't trust producers and will challenge those who put too long a BBE date on. The other factor is that people still expect the BBE to apply even if they've opened the jar. Once open, we can no longer control the humidity nor prevent external contaminants getting into the honey, so that's another reason producers will use a relatively short BBE date. Finally, remember they are BEST BEFORE dates, not USE BY. They refer to the quality of the product, not to product safety. As the partner of a hobby-scale honey producer, we put a BBE date of a couple of years on our jars. In practice our high quality, pure raw honey tends to be so good that the customers finish it in a few weeks and come back for more. OTOH we've got big jars of "cooking" honey that are years old and are absolutely fine. (This is honey that might be a percentage or so higher than we'd like on water content, or has been extracted from brood frames, or has a high pollen content. Absolutely fine to eat but not the high-quality product we like to sell to the public). As to crystallisation, in my experience that is 90% down to nectar source. Some honeys, like ivy or rapeseed, will crystalise easily and quickly, with ivy in particular setting to a very stiff consistency. Other honeys will stay liquid much more easily. The second factor is storage temperature; too cool and it will crystalise. When runny honey crystallises in the jar it can look blotchy or discoloured and will need to come up to almost blood temperature to dissolve. Taste-wise, there's no difference - it's the same honey. Then there's creamed, which is stirred honey "seeded" with crystallised honey, but we don't do that! We just literally spin it out of the comb, sieve it once, and pour into the jar. :)
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Pure honey virtually never goes off. A problem is that some commercially-sold honey is actually a mix of honey and sugar-water and this can ferment (as can raw honey with too high a water content). Large-scale producers therefore put a short "best-before" to "encourage" consumers not to try it after that date, when the ruse might be discovered. Some hobby beekeepers will do similarly if they don't have the confidence that they've measured the water content correctly. Unfortunately some local trading standards departments also don't trust producers and will challenge those who put too long a BBE date on. The other factor is that people still expect the BBE to apply even if they've opened the jar. Once open, we can no longer control the humidity nor prevent external contaminants getting into the honey, so that's another reason producers will use a relatively short BBE date. Finally, remember they are BEST BEFORE dates, not USE BY. They refer to the quality of the product, not to product safety. As the partner of a hobby-scale honey producer, we put a BBE date of a couple of years on our jars. In practice our high quality, pure raw honey tends to be so good that the customers finish it in a few weeks and come back for more. OTOH we've got big jars of "cooking" honey that are years old and are absolutely fine. (This is honey that might be a percentage or so higher than we'd like on water content, or has been extracted from brood frames, or has a high pollen content. Absolutely fine to eat but not the high-quality product we like to sell to the public). As to crystallisation, in my experience that is 90% down to nectar source. Some honeys, like ivy or rapeseed, will crystalise easily and quickly, with ivy in particular setting to a very stiff consistency. Other honeys will stay liquid much more easily. The second factor is storage temperature; too cool and it will crystalise. When runny honey crystallises in the jar it can look blotchy or discoloured and will need to come up to almost blood temperature to dissolve. Taste-wise, there's no difference - it's the same honey. Then there's creamed, which is stirred honey "seeded" with crystallised honey, but we don't do that! We just literally spin it out of the comb, sieve it once, and pour into the jar. :)
Thank you Derek - much better than any answer from Wikipedia. :) You've answered my original question. :thumbsup:
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Pure honey virtually never goes off. A problem is that some commercially-sold honey is actually a mix of honey and sugar-water and this can ferment (as can raw honey with too high a water content). Large-scale producers therefore put a short "best-before" to "encourage" consumers not to try it after that date, when the ruse might be discovered. Some hobby beekeepers will do similarly if they don't have the confidence that they've measured the water content correctly. Unfortunately some local trading standards departments also don't trust producers and will challenge those who put too long a BBE date on. The other factor is that people still expect the BBE to apply even if they've opened the jar. Once open, we can no longer control the humidity nor prevent external contaminants getting into the honey, so that's another reason producers will use a relatively short BBE date. Finally, remember they are BEST BEFORE dates, not USE BY. They refer to the quality of the product, not to product safety. As the partner of a hobby-scale honey producer, we put a BBE date of a couple of years on our jars. In practice our high quality, pure raw honey tends to be so good that the customers finish it in a few weeks and come back for more. OTOH we've got big jars of "cooking" honey that are years old and are absolutely fine. (This is honey that might be a percentage or so higher than we'd like on water content, or has been extracted from brood frames, or has a high pollen content. Absolutely fine to eat but not the high-quality product we like to sell to the public). As to crystallisation, in my experience that is 90% down to nectar source. Some honeys, like ivy or rapeseed, will crystalise easily and quickly, with ivy in particular setting to a very stiff consistency. Other honeys will stay liquid much more easily. The second factor is storage temperature; too cool and it will crystalise. When runny honey crystallises in the jar it can look blotchy or discoloured and will need to come up to almost blood temperature to dissolve. Taste-wise, there's no difference - it's the same honey. Then there's creamed, which is stirred honey "seeded" with crystallised honey, but we don't do that! We just literally spin it out of the comb, sieve it once, and pour into the jar. :)
Yum! I would totally trade you fresh eggs for fresh honey if it were practical. I need to meet some beekeepers in my area!
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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My understanding is that honey doesn't spoil. Is this strictly a marketing ploy?
The answer is regulations, and they change from place to place. First: all food has to have a stated expiration date. Even for 100% pure honey, as it has to be for example in my country, you still need it. Second: safety. You don't want the old idiot grandma (both my grandmas are class 1 public dangers since when they were young, it's a miracle they survived at all and didn't kill anyone, despite one of them repeatedly trying) serving 20 years old, opened, badly kept honey. While the honey won't spoil there will be bacteria depositing on the surface or in the product due to natural contamination.
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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My understanding is that honey doesn't spoil. Is this strictly a marketing ploy?
It's about the wording of the expiry date statement - ["best by" or "best before" mean something very different than "use by"](https://www.food.gov.uk/safety-hygiene/best-before-and-use-by-dates) - in the UK, at least, and [in the US, while there's no standard wording, similar wordings are used](https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/food-product-dating). So - that "best by" will relate to the sugar crystals mentioned below, which will negatively (I guess) alter the experience of eating the honey.
Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p
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My understanding is that honey doesn't spoil. Is this strictly a marketing ploy?
At least in plastic containers dates for things that don't spoil like water, honey and the like are not for the product itself but for the plastic container. Plastic begins to break down over time and will contaminate the water bottled within.