A quick search suggests that the average American uses about 1.3 pounds of honey per year. If I’m 40 years old, and guess that I might live to be 80, that’s only 52 pounds of honey, which I could easily buy in bulk. Honey doesn’t expire, and even assuming the price doesn’t skyrocket from bee die-offs, inflation alone will make the price go up over time.
Does it make sense to buy all the rest of the honey I’ll ever need for the rest of my life, right now?
I buy a 5 gallon bucket of honey once every 6ish years. It’s one of the only sweeteners my wife can have so we use it in everything that needs a sweeter taste. I fill small 20oz jars with it and seal the bucket back up. It’s a good investment because you can get it much much cheaper. I buy mine from Sleeping bear farms in Michigan.
Is it dangerous? What if the bears wake up?
They hibernate for quite a while. Plenty of time to steal their honey jars.
Hello.
Oh wait you meant the other kind of bear…
Honey can expire if not stored right.
So, if it’s left?
God damn that works on so many different levels!
That’s an old wives’ tale. Honey never spoils, it crystallizes. All you need to do is heat it to liquify. 3000 year old honey was found in an Egyptian tomb, and was still edible.
https://realrawhoney.co.uk/blogs-real-raw-honey-honey-in-ancient-egypt/
I misunderstood “poor storage” as a temperature. Sure, if you don’t seal the container and an abundance of moisture is able to enter, that could cause spoilage. So if OP doesn’t keep their honey in a bucket in the basement they should be fine.
Haven’t seen this mentioned yet so:
The honey may not expire, but the container you store it in could. I’d be very concerned about plastic disintegrating and/or leeching into the honey. Glass would be better for that, but it’s also really heavy compared to plastic, so you’d need more, smaller containers instead of one giant tub.
I would agree with you but I’m like 25% microplastic (and 8% regular plastic) so I figure what harm will be done has already been done.
It’s surprising that Bender has yet to say “I’m 40% plastic!”
Glass would also be better for heating it to melt crystals.
Once Honey 2.0 comes out in 20 years, your stock in Honey 1.0 will be worthless :(
Sure you could. But I’ll offer a different perspective
All honey tastes different from different producers and areas, you’ll be missing out on some wonderful honey flavors if you buy that much in bulk. If it’s purely for sweetening, sure fine, do it. But if you want the flavor of honey, check out a farmers market and see what you’d be missing out on with bulk.
The idea did occur that I’d better be damn sure that I like whatever honey I’ll be eating for the rest of my life.
I’ve also heard that honey helps to confer resistance to allergies to things that were in the area where the honey was made. As such, OP might be missing out on environmental defense by not diversifying.
A quick search suggests that the average American uses about 1.3 pounds of honey per year.
I think this is a case of people not eating honey and bringing the average way down.
My current SO puts honey in her tea and goes though about a pound and a half per month or about 18lbs per year.
It might sound like a lot but 24oz over an average of 30 days is less than an Oz of honey per day or 2 tablespoons across 4 cups of tea every day.I’ll balance her out - zero most years. It doesn’t taste good enough to start adding sweetener to things
Thank you, I’m one of these people, as are most of the folks I know. I’ll eat maybe a couple of teaspoons of honey per year, tops. And I cook 3 meals a day at home, from scratch, every day.
Honey is great, I love bees, but I don’t actually eat much honey.
Honey doesn’t expire but it crystalises giving it a different texture. You’d also have to check in on what happens to decades old honey
Not a lot. there was some honey in the tomb of an Egyptian mummy and they are it when they excavated him.
No.
A fire could destroy it, just saying 👀
That’s some very nice honey you got there, be a shame if it all burned down
Honey can change consistency, depending on how it is packaged and stored. In addition, you have to consider the cost and risk of storing it. But if you think the bees are going to die off, it could be a lucrative investment.
If storage space were free and limitless, maybe. Honey keeps forever in principle but that doesn’t mean your barrel could never be contaminated, broken into by bugs or rodents, etc.
Personally, I enjoy buying different varieties of honey, especially as it’s a craft which has been getting more popular and really taking off in “local food” culture. I don’t want to commit to a barrel of any one thing, and I’m also fairly sure that the honey I could buy in a barrel is not going to be the one I’d most enjoy, but some over filtered, over processed stuff.
So I say nay.
Lifetime supply of honey for me is one fairly small jar, except that one time I had a weird craving for honey in the comb, so I ordered a square of it and ate it like a sandwich. I guess I saw bears doing it and thought it looked tasty.
I don’t eat like this because I’m not fat
Yeah, then turn it into mead
It’s probably better to buy it along the way.
Yes inflation will make honey more expensive over the coming 50 years or so. But it will make everything else more expensive too.
I’ll keep my money on a savings account instead.
