using Honey - avoiding sediment

[ARGO DISTILLERY]

Hi

I am making a new liqueur using honey to sweeten it. My problem is the possible production of sediment and cloudiness. Trying to avoid experementation i wonder if  anybody has added honey to a specific level that doesnt produce sediment? I am making a liqueur and i am thinking of using pasteurized honey so as to minimise cloudiness too. is there any other treatment for the honey to be advised with?

thank you in Advance

by the way

Any idea how the TENNESSEE  HONEY is so clear?

[Silk City Distillers]

Filter your product to at least 1 micron, pollen can be as small as 4 micron, and anything a little bit larger than that can be visible as particulate.

Ensure your honey is filtered and free from wax.

It's highly likely that commercial honey flavored products are using standardized and processed natural flavors.

[Hudson bay distillers]

we buy honey from a local colony ,huterite colony  not bee colony lol its 2 bucks a pound filtered twice after extraction if u add one tbl spoon of water to every gallon of warmed honey and then whip it it will filter much easier but will not keep like raw honey . 

[bluestar]

Don't know if Letterpress Distilling in Seattle is on the Forum, but I know he uses honey for his limoncello, and when I visited, mentioned his process for avoiding clouding when using local honey for sweetening. Maybe he will provide you some pointers if you ask.

[ARGO DISTILLERY]

On 28/8/2017 at 1:34 PM, Silk City Distillers said:

Filter your product to at least 1 micron, pollen can be as small as 4 micron, and anything a little bit larger than that can be visible as particulate.

Ensure your honey is filtered and free from wax.

It's highly likely that commercial honey flavored products are using standardized and processed natural flavors.

isn't 1 micron to small to pass a solution containing 220gr /lit sugar?

[ARGO DISTILLERY]

On 28/8/2017 at 5:12 PM, bluestar said:

Don't know if Letterpress Distilling in Seattle is on the Forum, but I know he uses honey for his limoncello, and when I visited, mentioned his process for avoiding clouding when using local honey for sweetening. Maybe he will provide you some pointers if you ask.

thank you.  i will contact and let you know

[RobertS]

Micron sizing has to do with particle size, not concentration. Higher concentration of filtered particles would require larger filter surface area and likely multi-stage filtration with decreasing pore sizes. Engineering toolbox points out that sugar is 0.005 microns and will slip through 1 micron easy. 1 micron is a nice, convenient, easy to find size that allows pretty much all the flavor and color compounds through while blocking many of the larger molecules that cause haze or clumping. There are a few things that can be lost - gin makers will proudly forgo filtering to preserve those - and a few pesky haze makers that slip through, but 1 micron is a good general-purpose filter size.

[Jongood]

We use a 5micron and 1 micron filtration at room temperature that removes all the sediment in our bottles.  What helps as well is THOROUGH mechanical mixing of the honey and spirit.  It doesn't have to be fancy...just something to fully blend the honey and spirit.

 

 

[bluestar]

20 hours ago, Jongood said:

We use a 5micron and 1 micron filtration at room temperature that removes all the sediment in our bottles.  What helps as well is THOROUGH mechanical mixing of the honey and spirit.  It doesn't have to be fancy...just something to fully blend the honey and spirit.

 

 

What concentration of honey are you using? It is the rate you can go through the filter that is affected by both the concentration and the filter size.

[Jongood]

We use an amount of .7lb-1.3lbs/gal and pump it at a rate of 2gpm.  

[LuckyGuy]

On 2/9/2018 at 3:51 PM, Jongood said:

We use a 5micron and 1 micron filtration at room temperature that removes all the sediment in our bottles.  What helps as well is THOROUGH mechanical mixing of the honey and spirit.  It doesn't have to be fancy...just something to fully blend the honey and spirit.

 

 

I realize this was forever ago....but did you filter prior or after the mixing with the spirit, and was the spirit fully aged prior to mixing?  I'm assuming you would never want honey in the aging process.

[OneFootKev]

I have nailed down a process to completely remove all non-dissolved solids from a product with an unfiltered raw honey loading of 15% +. All I will say is that it is not easy and it is not inexpensive. The least expensive option is to go with an amber bottle. Surprisingly effective solution! If you would like to speak more about the filtering process I've found feel free to reach out I am happy to share details off forum.

KevinDouglasFord@gmail.com

[Foreshot]

I'll vouch for Kevin - I was up there a couple weeks ago. I bought a couple bottles of the krupnik (honey liqueur). It has zero visual flaws and no sediment. It's clear and clean. Tastes great too!

[Skip]

No secrets here. As mentioned above, I've been making a perfectly clear honey-sweetened limoncello at Letterpress Distilling for ten years now.

Like OneFootKev says, it's not easy and it's not cheap.

This is my process:

1. 1. Make a honey syrup (honey and water) and heat it to 160F before adding it to the spirit; this actually changes the structure (denatures) of the proteins so that they'll precipitate even faster and much more cleanly.
2. Blend the honey syrup with the spirit well.
3. Chill the product. Like, REALLY chill it. Depending on your volume, you can chill it in carboys in a chest freezer (we used to do this) or in a tank with a glycol chiller (we do this now). Basically, the cold temps will cause the honey proteins to crash out much more quickly and cleanly. Then chill it for a few days. In a freezer, 2–3 days will do it. In a glycol tank, we let it run about a week. Then we let it come back to room temp, at which point the now-separated proteins will either float or sink (we can't figure out why it does which, but they almost always float). Then we slowly open the bottom of the tank and rack out the clear stuff (if it's floating) or the goop (if it's sinking).
4. Once we have as much clear product as we can get and the proteins start to creep in, we collect what's left separately (we call this the dregs) and then put those in chest freezers to separate again.

See the attached photo for the end result.

Hope this helps some folks.