# Thick Honey



## hvacrich0 (Aug 25, 2014)

I built a honey storage/bottling tank with a food grade 55 gallon plastic drum. Took 100 ft of pex pipe and wrapped the outside of the drum, built a plywood box around it and spray foamed it. I took a 2 1/2 gallon water heater and a small circulating pump and it works great. Added a extra lid with a 5 gallon bucket cut into it with 3/8 holes drilled and a 5 gallon paint strainer in it from Lowes and I can strain 5 gallons of honey at a time into my storage tank. New toy so I left it run for 48 hours wile I was extracting and cleaning up. I was a little concerned about the thin honey because of so many 1/2 caped frames so I started bottling some in quart jars for an order I had and when it cooled off it was almost too thick. I kept it running for around 48 hours at around 105 to 110 degrees and I couldn't believe how much it thickened the honey. So my question is can you thin honey without causing a problem or am I just stuck with a batch of thick stuff for this year?


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

Heating honey in an enclosed tank is not going to thicken it. In order for honey to get thicker, it has to lose moisture content, which it can't do in a tank with a lid on it. Maybe the uncapped honey wasn't as "thin" as you thought it might have been. Just because honey is uncapped in the frames, doesn't mean that it is automatically has a high moisture content. A couple years ago we had a very dry low humidity summer, and the honey was 15% moisture even with it being uncapped when we extracted it.


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## Planner (Apr 3, 2016)

My honey this year is thinner. A moisture check indicated 18.2% which from my point of view is fine. Ultimately if not over heated most honey (not all) will crystalize.


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## DavidZ (Apr 9, 2016)

I just harvested 90lbs of thick thick Cresote Honey, smells like fresh rain in the Desert, stuff is thick as molasses, yellow as butter.
Taste out of this world.


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