Why Honey Sets and How to Make Perfect Soft Set Honey using the Lyson 100ltr Creaming Machine

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mancin Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Back in the honey extraction room today, and I'm going to show you the Lyson 100L creaming machine, and I'm also going to show you how to make soft set honey. So in this video, we'll run through the features of the Lyson 100L creaming machine, This is an amazing piece of kit, one of the first pieces of kit I actually bought from Lyson and was really astounded as to how high quality the machine was. So effectively what it does, it's got 2 functions, so it's a dual function machine, something you know I really like in my limited space here. So it can be used as a settling tank, it can be used to cream honey, which is what we're going to show you today, and it can also be used as a decrystallization machine. So if you've got buckets of honey set, set in the bucket, instead of putting them through a warming cabinet and then having to go in and constantly stir them to get the crystals to break down, you can put it in this machine in its crystallized form, put the heaters on, and then churn it at the same time. And it really speeds up that process of decrystallization. It's got 3 functions, not 2, 3 separate functions. One of the add-ons that I put onto this machine that doesn't come as standard is the ball valve. You'll know if you've seen my videos before how much I love these ball valves. They're really good, really, um, make the whole process flow a lot more efficient, and it means that I can decant directly from my creaming machine into the bottling machine that just goes down there, and I can jar my honey directly up from there. So I don't need to kind of pour buckets of honey into the creaming machine, decant it out back into buckets, and then jar from the buckets or decant it back into another machine. It's all done in that one machine, saves loads of mess, and it becomes more efficient because you don't have the waste that you get when you use your buckets. So soft set honey, if you Google soft set honey, we're 3rd on Google. So I'm really proud of that fact, so I thought I'd slip that into the video. Just try it out, we are number 3 for the whole of the world for soft set honey. How we— how have we done that? No idea whatsoever, but I'm not going to argue with it. Just try it out. Some people we come a bit higher, some people come we come a bit lower, but we tend to be on the first page of Google. So we sell a lot of soft set honey, and when I'm making this video, we're out of stock. Hence the requirement to get another batch on the go. And I love soft set honey. It's definitely my favorite type of honey. I like runny honey, but I really do prefer soft set honey. Something you can get your spoon into and spread it on your toast and leave kind of like a big thick amount of honey there, as opposed to runny. Runny honey that kind of like soaks in a bit more. So what is creamed honey? Creamed honey is normal runny honey that's been seeded with a fine crystal seed and interspersed within the honey, and then all of the crystals within the honey follow that first seed, that introduced size of crystal, and then you get a kind of homogeneous feel to the honey. So it all sounds very, very technical. It's not. Basically, you're taking runny honey, you're adding a crystal size that you like. So you might buy some honey in from someone, or you might keep a batch separately to keep on doing it. And then you're just mixing it, gently mixing it, interspersing that seed. And then ultimately what you end up with is an exact replica of the seed honey that you put in. So it's called the dice method. And that's the method that we're going to show you here today. So I'm going to run it in 2 ways. I'm going to give you the review of the Lyson 100 litre creaming machine. That's how I make my soft set honey. It's 100 litres, works out for me about 600 jars from a single machine, so I can make really nice big batches of it. Makes it a lot easier for me. And then what I'm also going to show you today is how you make it on a smaller scale. So it's really, really easy to replicate this method on a much, much smaller scale. So I will show you that method as well and intersperse it within the video, plus I'll do the review of the 100-liter creaming machine from Lysim. So where do we start? First of all, you need some honey. Now the honey that I find for me works best in a soft-set honey is honey that wouldn't naturally set. Now I know a lot of beekeepers completely disagree with that and do it another way, and now that's not to say that you can't make soft-set honey with honey that will naturally set, So like an OSR, oilseed rape honey, or any kind of spring honey that's going to naturally set quite hard, that will work fine for a soft-set honey. But I find oilseed rape honey a bit bland. I like to use real premium Welsh wildflower runny honey, and then I add my seed to it. And then that way I'm getting the flavour from the premium Welsh wildflower honey that I really, really like and my customers love, Plus I'm getting the texture that I'm adding from the seed. So you can do it either way. If you've got honey, if you've got runny honey in buckets, great, you can move straight on to the runny honey step. If you've got set honey in buckets, doesn't matter whether it's oilseed rape or not, you can move on to the next step, which is you need to melt that honey down. So I'm going to jump in already at that step. So I've melted my honey down already. So I keep my honey in buckets like this. This is a 60-pound bucket. I also keep a 90-pound bucket as well. Really don't like the 30-pound buckets. Bit small for me, they are, um, but I know a lot of people use them. For me, bigger bucket the better, as long as you can lift it. So what I've done with that is I've put that through the decrystallization machine. So I'll cut to a video and you'll see there's loads of crystals in there. The churning of it is breaking up those crystals, but then also the heat is warming it up to leave you with just a plain runny honey. So a lot of the methods for making soft-set honey call for you to bring the runny honey or your set honey up to 50°C. Now we don't do that at Black Mountain Honey, and I know that the science doesn't quite make sense. You're supposed to bring it up to 50°C to break down that crystalline structure in whatever honey you've got, so whether it's runny or set, you're kind of like resetting the crystalline structure so that when you add your seed, it follows that one. Now, I really don't like that. We sell raw honey here and we don't ever heat our honey up above 38°C. That's the temperature it is within the hive, and that's the temperature that we heat it up to on using the process for our soft-set honey, and it works fine. You could argue that 'cause you're not breaking down the crystalline structure effectively and then you're adding a smaller one, you might get a coarser soft-set honey at the end, but I don't find that at all. Never had that once happen to me. find that 38 degrees will work, especially if you're using a creaming machine where you've got the motorized action breaking down those crystals as well. So I should have mentioned this before as well. This is the heating controller on the Lysen 100-liter creaming machine. Really, really simple operation. All you do, you use the plus and minus. There you see we use the 38 degrees Celsius, plus or minus, set your temperature. And then you just press the power button to turn it on, and then you get a light here to tell you that that's on. It's saying the temperature at the moment is 33.8 degrees, and then it will build up to your desired temperature, and it's as easy as that. So that's the method that we use. So you need to take your set honey and you need to heat it up. For me, 38 degrees C, but it's— what's more important is you're bringing it up to a temperature where it is visibly clear. You've broken down all of the crystals and you've got runny, clear honey. So that's where we're at at the moment. Now, this is where the method will differ if you're using kind of like a bucket and a drill, or if you're using the Lyson creaming machine. So in the machine now, in the Lyson creaming machine, I have got about 200 pounds of runny honey. It's heated up, it's warm, It's clear, it's ready for me to add my seed honey. So in this bucket here, I've got my seed honey. Now, this is, like, it's not set because it's quite warm in this honey extraction room, but as you can see, it's definitely not clear. I'll let you have a look inside. And if I were to kind of get a spoon and taste it, you could feel the crystals on your tongue, really fine, smooth crystals, and that's what you need to make a soft-set honey. So if you've got a bucket of seed, great, use that. If you haven't, go and find a local beekeeper and ask them if they've got some seed. If they haven't, fine, go and buy some soft-set honey. So if you want to make this at home, you can buy honey from our website. Just go down to your local beekeepers association, find one of your local beekeepers, and they will be able to sell you some soft-set honey. And you can ramp up the production quite easily. So what is a rule of thumb is you're supposed to have 10% seed to the overall batch. So if you've got a 100 kilo batch, you want 10 kilos of seed. If you've got a 10 kilo batch, you want 1 kilo of seed. Now I've done this with much less seed than that and it does work, it just takes longer. But it's always good practice to keep back a good amount of seed and then you can always make a really, really good amount. But if you want to kind of ramp it up, you could do a 10 kilo batch with 1 kilo seed, and then you've got a 10 kilo batch, and then you could do a 100 kilo batch with your 10 kilograms of seed. Just takes 2 times to do it. I'm jumping between the 2 methods a little bit here. So if you're going to make this not in the lyse and creaming machine, you're going to make it just normally, you've got your seed in the bucket there, and then I would just add runny honey to it. So we've got runny honey in here. So what I've done there is I've taken the bucket that I've got my seed in and I have just put some runny honey into that bucket. So like I say, you want to work on a basis of around 10%, so 10% seed, 90% runny honey. Then what you want to do is get a drill. So I'll flash up the kind of image that I'm talking about. I don't have one, but they're really, really cheap to pick up. And you just mix the honey together, mix it up, stir it up, and you wanna do that over kind of 3 or 4 days, the longer the better. So the settings that you have on the lye and creaming machine is it stirs it for 15 minutes every hour for either 24 hours or 48 hours. Now, I don't think you need to do it that much, that's just the automatic settings. I would say get in there at least 2 or 3 times a day with a drill. and just drill it. And what you're trying to do with the drill is you're not trying to introduce air, you're just trying to intersperse that seed into your soft-set honey. So that's pretty much it for this method. Like, it's, it's, it's a really easy, simple method. And then what I do is I don't let it set back in the bucket. So after 3 or 4 days, I say, right, that is done. I can then jar that honey and I let it set in the jars. Make sure you warm your jars before you put the honey in, otherwise you can get frosting, which is just a little bit unsightly, but doesn't make a massive difference to the final end product. So if you're doing it in the lyson creaming machine, all you do is the opposite to that. What I do is I fill the, the machine up with, say, 70-80% of crystallized honey or runny honey. If it's crystallized, run it through the machine, get it up to 38°C, break it down until it's liquid, And then I add my seed to the machine as opposed to adding the runny honey from the machine into the bucket. So it makes a bit more sense when you see it in video. And then all you do is you go onto the automatic function at the top and you choose your function. And like I say, there's just 2 modes on there. It's a 24-hour mode and a 48-hour mode. They're basically the same apart from one being 24 hours, one being 48 hours. Turns the mechanism around for 15 minutes Every hour for 48 hours. What I would say though is make sure when you're using the dial that you use the lowest setting possible. This machine has the capability to whip the honey, and what you're not looking for is a whipped honey, you're looking for an interspersed honey. So all this machine does is it stirs honey. Don't think of it as a whipping machine. It's if you get like a meringue topping on your honey, then you've done it wrong, um, and you need to scoop that meringue topping off because that does go a bit rancid in the jars. So just be careful if you're following that method, um, make sure you keep it on a really, really low setting. So these are the settings here. You have a speed function, and like I say, all I do is I turn it to the absolute minimum and then have it about there, about 8:00 If you have it too far that way, it won't even turn on. So have it about 8 o'clock, and that's a perfect setting. And then all you need to do is just press start once, and if the machine doesn't turn on, you just need to get it just to turn on. And there you go, and that will set the machine going. And then you can literally Come back in 48 hours and the batch is complete. It's as simple as that, one-button press operation. And to stop it, all you do is press the stop button. So temperature is a really important thing to talk about in this video. In terms of the creaming machine, when I'm making creamed honey, I don't put the temperature on. I find it creams better with, with it being a little bit more viscous. So I don't put any heat through it when I'm in the creaming mode. When I'm decrystallising the honey and getting it runny, I use 38°C. And then once you've finished your batch and you put it into jars, the temperature is really crucial then, and you're aiming for 14°C. So some beekeepers struggle to make honey in the summer because it's just too hot everywhere. Luckily in our house, we've got a really nice cool room, that never really gets above 17 or 18°C, and then at night you, you'll get kind of like nice 12, 13°C. So it fluctuates a little bit. If you want to build yourself a nice kind of cabinet with cooling and heating as well and control the temperature, 14°C is what you're aiming for. So that's pretty much it in terms of the review for the Lysa machine. I would highly, highly recommend this machine. It's one of my favorite pieces of kit in my extraction room. I couldn't really do what we do without it. We sell a lot of soft-set honey, and doing it with a drill, doing it the old-fashioned way, was quite difficult. So for us, it's a really, really good piece of kit. The drill method though, in terms of the quality of the honey that comes out of it, is identical. There is no functional kind of benefit to getting this machine. It's purely down to kind of efficiency of the operation. And in that respect, it's incredible. It makes it such an easy process to follow. And then the added benefit of adding that ball valve onto the machine as well means you can jar straight out of the machine. Means, like I said before, it's efficient, there's no mess, it just makes the process very, very easy indeed. So in terms of the bucket method, again, that's the method pretty much complete on that one. You just want to keep on going over 2 or 3 days in a nice kind of consistent temperature room, ideally around 14°C. If it's a little bit above that, a little bit below that, it doesn't matter. Be careful not to whip the honey. Use the drill on the absolute lowest setting you possibly got. You could do it with like a stainless steel serving spoon or anything. All you're doing is just interspersing that seed throughout the runny honey, so you don't really need any fancy equipment, but a drill with the stainless steel drill bit does work really, really well for that method. Obviously then all you would do, follow the same method, put it into the jars while it's still runny. That's key for me. I don't set it in the jar or set it in the bucket. I put it in the jars when it's still runny, but the seed is interspersed, and then I let it set in the jar. That's my method, and I find it works really, really well. So if you're following the method of how to make soft set honey in the Lyson creaming machine, I'll jump back to that bit now. So we've got the creaming machine is full of runny honey. All you do is open up the lid. You take your seed honey. Now, if this is set seed honey, just scrape it out with like a stainless steel trowel. If it's a little bit runny like this set is, then you just pour it in. Then what I like to do, always hold back just a tiny little bit of your soft set honey, and the reason for that is, um, you might mess up a batch or you might need to urgently make another batch and you've not got enough seed, and I find if you've got a bucket with about 10% in when you're doing your next batch of runny, You can just quickly chuck some runny honey onto it, stir it all up, do a really quick dice method, and then you've got a big batch of seed ready for your next big batch of set honey. So it's just good practice to kind of keep a batch of it there, make sure you mark it up accordingly so you know what it is and you don't melt it down and put it into your next batch of runny honey. So then close the lid, press the button. And it's, it's literally as simple as that. 48 hours later, you can connect your bottling machine up to it, go straight into the jars, or you can decant it into buckets to keep it for later, and then you just need to melt it down again when you use it. But I'd always suggest, once it's complete through either of these methods, just get it into the jar. It's not like runny honey where it's going to be a bit of an issue if it sets in the jar. You want it to set in the jar. That's how you make the product. So that's it for the video. Really hope you've enjoyed this one. I love making soft-set honey. It's my favourite type of honey. I quite like the process behind it as well. If you're interested in buying our honey, please go to our website, www.blackmountainhoney.co.uk, or if you want, just search for soft-set honey in Google. We should come up on the first page. It's a really nice honey, so I do recommend you give it a go. And definitely give this method a go as well. It's a quick, easy method, nothing kind of fancy around it, pretty much the standard method that people use for making soft set honey. Don't think it's difficult, it's a really easy method, really easy for anyone to follow. So give it a go and turn some of your kind of wildflower runny honey into a really nice new soft set product. So that's it for the video, hope you've enjoyed it. Please hit the subscribe button, please Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.