Raw honey turns thick and cloudy in the cold. It has not gone off and nothing has been added — it is doing what honey does when nobody has heated it.
Every winter somebody writes to ask whether their honey has spoiled. It has turned thick, pale and grainy at the bottom of the jar. It has not spoiled. It has crystallised, and it is one of the surest signs a honey is raw.
## Why it happens
Honey is mostly two sugars, glucose and fructose, in far more than the water can hold. Given time and cold, the glucose comes out as fine crystals. How fast depends on the flowers the bees worked: some honeys set in weeks, some take a year.
Raw honey also carries tiny particles of pollen and wax — ours is strained, not pressure-filtered — and the crystals form around them. Honey that has been heated and filtered fine has had those removed, which is why it stays runny on a supermarket shelf for so long.
## Making it runny again
Stand the jar in a bowl of warm water — hand-hot, not boiling — and stir now and then until it clears. Do not microwave it and do not boil it: heat is what raw honey has been spared.
## Or don't
Plenty of people prefer it set. It spreads on a hot roti without running off, and it does not drip from the spoon.
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