Blackstrap is about 50% sugar and has a wide variety of crud remaining. Cassis (Blackcurrant) Syrup. Human beings have been consuming raw honey and also using it as a sweetener in many recipes since ancient times. Smell the honey. However, molasses, honey, and syrup are not the same to be used interchangeably. As insects search for the nectar in the flower, the flower’s sticky pollen catches on their bodies and gets transferred to the flower’s stigma. Bees are kept to obtain honey on a commercial basis. Every year we get questions about its availability and we sell out of the honey within the first hour of Urban Wild! The Honey Connoisseur: Selecting, Tasting, and Pairing Honey by C. Marina Marchese, “Terrorism, Murder, Drug Trafficking and…Pollen?” by Texas A&M Today, Great resource list from the Chicago Honey Co-op. For those who only have syrup, you can make it thicker by letting the syrup cook in a saucepan. Take about half a teaspoon of honey and taste it. Lurie Garden Honey will be on sale at our Annual Urban Wild Event, Thursday, October 19, 4:30-6:30pm on the Pritzker Pavilion Stage. Approved … (Bumblebees and some wasps also make honey, though they don’t store it in the quantities that honeybees do.) My brother refuses to believe this to be true, so I wanted to ask if anyone else has heard of bees doing this. When extracting honey sometimes small amount of resin ends up in the honey. Clover (13.8%), and a rose family pollen (25.2%) that he had trouble identifying due to its similarity in appearance to several other pollen grains in the rose family. When the honeybee is wrestling in a flower collecting nectar and pollen, she gets covered in pollen granules which inevitably find their way into the finished (capped) honey. If some of the propolis gets in the honey a light pine or nutty taste may add to the flavor profile of the honey. https://www.luriegarden.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Lurie-Garden-Honeybees-cooling-hive.mp4, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees. 5. Surprisingly, there was only a small amount of mint family plants represented in our honey. Syrup can also be made by reducing naturally sweet juices such as sugarcane, maple, or sorghum juice. Molasses is a thick, syrupy sweetener that many believe to be more healthful than sugar. Molasses is the main sweetener in pumpkin pie though it is also used to make rum. However, it can add and interesting taste and sweetness to particular desserts and baked goods just like molasses and honey. Regular molasses and blackstrap molasses have less sugar content than honey. Some varieties such as black locust honey never crystallize while others such as linden honey crystallize within a few months. Like molasses, this is a syrup that remains after the crystallizable sugars have been removed. These sweeteners are used to make food items tastier. Filed Under: Food Tagged With: Honey, molasses, Syrup. Honey is fat free, cholesterol free and is a good source of anti-oxidants for the maintenance of good health. Generic honey (left) is no match for the unique tastes and flavors of local honeys straight from the hive which can express many characteristics and transport you to a unique time and place. Nectar is carried in the abdomen in a special place call the honey stomach. Buckwheat honey does not really taste of buckwheat – it is a dark-colored honey with a rich, molasses taste. The red dot on this map shows the location of the Lurie Garden hives relative to the garden. Tasting a few honeys in a row may help you clearly see their differences, but too many can get confusing. He chemically dehydrates the honey sample and then scans the resulting pollen residue at 400x under a microscope. (image from Google Maps). Lurie Garden honey, shown here, is available for purchase only during our Urban Wild event in October! fields. Lurie Garden visitors often notice the amount of honeybee activity around the mint family plants. Lemon? Linden tree flowers produce a honey that tastes minty and has a light color. So honey with many forget me not pollen grains and few honey locust pollen grains will likely be getting most of its flavor from the black honey locust. Honey has a very similar texture to molasses. All Rights Reserved. Sometimes a univarietal honey’s taste and look seems to correspond to the dominant plant it was foraged from. I can give you a nutrition comparison of all three and my opinion between the first two. Clover was represented as was a rose family pollen. This article looks at the types, benefits, and risks of molasses. What is the secret plant mix that is giving Lurie Garden honey its remarkable flavor? Like other "natural" sugars, such as honey and agave syrup, molasses may sound like a healthier choice than refined sugar. I have never experienced sorghum in my life so I am not quiet sure of how it tastes compared to the other two. It is not unlike becoming familiar with wines or cheeses. So to put it another way, the bees can segregate the honey derived from different plants. What color is the honey? There are differences between these sweeteners that necessitate using them cautiously in different recipes. Does anyone know what that is ? Light molasses has a distinctive, sweet and mild taste. The dehydration process is then continued by the house bees. Some flowers do not produce the same ratio of pollen and nectar. • While syrup is made by adding sugar to water and then boiling it, molasses is a kind of syrup that is a byproduct of the process of manufacture of sugar from sugarcane and beets. Containing around 65 percent sucrose, light molasses often doubles as a sweetener and syrup for pancakes. Any particular pollen amount smaller than that isn’t worth counting for the purpose of this type of testing. I will only buy 100% pure maple syrup as everything else sold in stores is really flavored corn syrup. The honey slowly pours out of a spout at the bottom of the extractor into a bucket and is filtered. They are found in a restricted area west of the garden. The best sugar cane is sun-ripened, allowing the sugars to come forward naturally. However, it has a … Molasses, on the other hand, was brought to the U.S. from the Caribbean, the epicenter of the sugar cane industry, to be used in rum production. But guess what: It's still basically just sugar (as are all those other natural-sounding options). She also went on to say that if honey is placed in the wrong compartment bees will it take it out and put it in the right area. Caramel? The nectar and pollen of a flower does not always have an obvious correlation in the taste of the finished honey. After you start to get familiar with the differences between honeys you may find it enjoyable to play with pairing honey with various foods, whether it is drizzling it on various cheeses or nuts or matching honeys in your cooking to compliment spices being used. However, since the syrup is removed later in the refinement process, it does not have as heavy a taste or color as molasses. You can even mix equal parts honey and syrup to imitate the thick consistency of golden syrup. Gradually add flour mixture, and beat until just combined. Thank you Laura! Honey is a thick golden liquid that is made by bees after collecting nectar of flowers. These honeys are harvested right after a particular flower, usually a crop, is done blooming. There are also honeys referred to as “univarietal”, such as blueberry honey. While sugar is the main product, molasses is the dark brown syrup that is viscous and sweet. Great one! These characteristics vary based on what plants the hive’s bees have been collecting nectar from. Many times people substitute one for the other for sweetening a recipe. Learning how bees make honey and how they reproduce to make both more bees and honey it must be a struggle to be a bee. There is much conjecture as to which plants Lurie Garden’s bees forage from and what then ends up contributing to our honey. • Molasses is made by boiling sugarcane juice and extracting sugar from it. Molasses is made by extracting the juice of sugarcane and then crystallizing sugar from it. One of our favorite ways to use honey is to oven-roast chicken pieces until they are about 2/3 done, then move them to one side of the baking dish, pour off most of the accumulated fat and add baking powder biscuits. Each time the process is repeated, the molasses loses sugar content and gets darker and more earthy flavored. The seller said that the flavors came from the plants that the bees visited but at the bottom of one jar was a green fluid. Crushing of sugarcane gives its juice that is boiled to obtain molasses and sugar. Honeybees will commonly travel as far away as three miles in any direction to forage for nectar, so the plants in the garden may be only a fraction of where they forage. Wild blueberry univarietal honey has strong tasting notes of blueberries and even an indigo tint to the color. The honey that remains is raw, which means it is never heated. The honey is dark in colour with a strong full-bodied malt-like molasses taste and pungent aroma.. Buckwheat honey is known for its high antioxidant content. The caps on the cells of are removed and the frames are then quickly spun in an extractor’s centrifuge. Fascinating post! While honey is fructose, glucose, and sucrose and can be 20% to 60% sweeter than white sugar, but with a composition very similar to table sugar. We get teased for having so many clover plants invading turf areas in Lurie Garden, but now we can say we keep it for the bees! Perhaps the hawthorn nectar, which has a somewhat unpleasant scent contributes a slightly astringent undertone that actually enhances the overall flavor by keeping the heady, floral notes from the clover and goatsbeard from becoming too cloying. I will have to go to the next Urban Wild and get myself some. • Molasses is … Bees forage resin from tree trunks to seal the hive from the elements. Both honey and molasses are sweet, but honey is noticeably sweeter and lacks the bitterness that molasses provides. Great story, Laura. When tree resin makes contact with a bees mouth parts, it is considered propolis. • Syrup is used to make bases of most of the medications available in liquid form. Difference Between Molasses, Syrup and Honey • While syrup is made by adding sugar to water and then boiling it, molasses is a kind of syrup that is a byproduct of... • Syrup is also made by reducing natural sweet juices of maple, corn, and sorghum. The tiny pollen granules in the honey and sometimes other particles such as dust and resin allow the crystals to form in the super-saturated solution of sugars. The tiny forget-me-not weed flowers (Myosotis sp.) Hello Our honey is lighter in color in spring and darker and richer in fall. The meeting of the flowers pollen and its stigma starts the process of pollination or fertilization, enabling the plant to make seeds for its next generation. We’re not sure about specific plants honeybee’s favor. You can get a peek at Lurie Garden’s hives if you look down on the right side as you descend the Nichols Bridgeway. Never know season or location of where it’s buzzed affects the colour and probably the taste. The honey lab was a blast! Eastern bee balm, various ornamental onion flowers, and salvia seem to be the main attraction for bees in late spring. If you look closely, in this video you can see how honeybees work together and use their wings to move air – whether to dehydrate the nectar/enzyme solution or, as in this video, to cool the hive on a hot day. Desert wildflower honey tends to be thick, so thick they are actually difficult to extract. Life becomes, like our multi-floral honey, enriching. Molasses (blackstrap) is 70% sucrose and is about one-half as sweet as sugar. Treacle (/ ˈ t r iː k əl /) is any uncrystallised syrup made during the refining of sugar. Honey is made mainly by insects from the species Apis mellifera – fondly known to everyone as honeybees. Where bees get their nectar and pollen depends on the season and the available blooming plants in the area. Like maple syrup, honey has a close enough consistency to molasses that it can be used as a substitute in a cup-for-cup ratio (1 cup honey for 1 cup molasses). Does it smell bright and citrusy or maybe dusty and sweet like a dried flower arrangement? Lurie Garden is located at the southeast corner of Millennium Park. Hazelnut? Let the honey melt on your tongue. Up until the 19th century, molasses … This is fortunate as we have many ornamental onion flowers in the garden! They're both sugar, but molasses is a taste that takes a bit of getting used to. Dark Brown vs. Light Brown Sugar. This honey stays unspoiled and unfermented for years…even ancient Egyptian tombs have been found to contain unspoiled honey! For savory dishes, replace 1 cup of molasses with the same amount of honey, dark corn syrup, or maple syrup. Pomegranate molasses is a sweet, fruity syrup that is a reduction of fresh pomegranate juice that’s sweetened with dates, sugar, or honey. produce large quantities of one of the smallest pollen grains in the world, but not a lot of nectar while black locust tree (Robinia pseudoacacia) flowers produce large quantities of nectar, but small amounts of pollen grains. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy: Legal. Either one is fine. Get a weekly dose of calming nature. Tropical honeys tend to be thin and runny due to the high humidity of those regions. Honeys in picture from left to right: Generic – Chicago, US;, Star Thistle – Colorado, USA; Sugar Gum – Kangaroo Island, Australia; Zurich Wildflower – Switzerland; Acacia – Italy; Wild Blueberry – Maine, USA; Lurie Garden – Chicago, IL, USA; Tupelo – Florida, USA; Buckwheat – Wisconsin, USA; Lavender – France; Apple Blossom – Hokkaido, Japan. Very dark honey can certainly taste like molasses so it’s hard to say. Your email address will not be published. The most common forms of treacle are golden syrup, a pale variety, and a darker variety known as black treacle.Black treacle, or molasses, has a distinctively strong, slightly bitter flavour, and a richer colour than golden syrup. Honey expresses many characteristics including color, texture, viscosity, taste, smell, and how quickly it crystalizes. As mentioned before, when bees forage nectar, pollen inadvertently collects on their fuzzy abdomens and legs and it is the pollen, not nectar, is the element in honey that allows us to trace a honey’s origin back to a type of flower. When you care about a particular place, you can’t help but to become curious about that area’s ecology. Bees forage resin from tree trunks to seal the hive from the elements. During both foraging expeditions, the honeybee gets covered in pollen, helping fertilize the flower. Light molasses is roughly 90% sugar. 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