Know Your Sweeteners: Honey: Part Two

Know Your Sweeteners: Honey: Part Two

PRF El Salvador announces speakers and panellists

Following a call for applications in October 2022, Producer & Roaster Forum (PRF) has announced its first speakers and panellists for PRF El Salvador. The two-day forum will be held on 16 and 17 March 2023 at the Salamanca Exhibition Centre in San Salvador. The event is set to return to El Salvador after it […]


Playing Leaderboard, the Arcade-Inspired Coffee Game

We sat down to try the newest version of the game—a fun opportunity to learn more about coffee while vying for cool coffee prizes.  BY TANYA NANETTISENIOR ONLINE CORRESPONDENT Photos by Tanya Nanetti I’ve never been much into video games, except for the classic arcade games of my youth.   Growing up in the ‘80s meant […]


Florencia y Fortunata: A Café Empowering Women in Peru

The Cusco café, founded by Carolina Peralta Minaya, sells coffee from women producers and features women demonstrating their skills behind the bar. BY JORDAN BUCHANANBARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE Photos courtesy of Carolina Peralta Minaya Traceability, sustainability, and conscientiousness are key values pervading the specialty-coffee trade. For many consumers and traders, these values inform their decision to […]


Brewing at Home and on the Road with Justin Pierce

In this series, we ask coffee professionals how they like to drink their coffee while at home and when traveling. BY TANYA NANETTISENIOR ONLINE CORRESPONDENT Feature photo courtesy of Justin Pierce Coffee professionals tend to spend most of their days brewing coffee. Baristas brew coffee behind the bar for their customers. Roasters brew it to […]

Know Your Sweeteners: Honey: Part Two

New AFCA Director Gilbert Gatali on the 20th African Fine Coffees Conference

As the African Fine Coffees Association (AFCA) prepares for the 20th iteration of its flagship event, the African Fine Coffees Conference and Exhibition, the group is operating under new executive…


Playing Leaderboard, the Arcade-Inspired Coffee Game

We sat down to try the newest version of the game—a fun opportunity to learn more about coffee while vying for cool coffee prizes.  BY TANYA NANETTISENIOR ONLINE CORRESPONDENT Photos by Tanya Nanetti I’ve never been much into video games, except for the classic arcade games of my youth.   Growing up in the ‘80s meant […]


Conflict in the Red Sea: Why coffee roasters need to prepare for shipping delays

Like many other industries, conditions in the coffee supply chain can change quickly, and in turn, have a huge impact on all actors and stakeholders. Price volatility is one of the more pertinent – which is influenced by many factors. These include fluctuations in supply and demand, extreme or unexpected weather events, global economic downturn, […]


Florencia y Fortunata: A Café Empowering Women in Peru

The Cusco café, founded by Carolina Peralta Minaya, sells coffee from women producers and features women demonstrating their skills behind the bar. BY JORDAN BUCHANANBARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE Photos courtesy of Carolina Peralta Minaya Traceability, sustainability, and conscientiousness are key values pervading the specialty-coffee trade. For many consumers and traders, these values inform their decision to […]

Know Your Sweeteners: Honey: Part Two

An Unfiltered History of Vietnamese Coffee

We explore the history of coffee in Vietnam and how the industry’s perception of Vietnamese coffee is evolving.  BY EMILY MENESES BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE Featured photo by frank mckenna via Unsplash What do you think of when you hear the term “Vietnamese coffee”? For Kim Dam, founder of Portland Cà Phê, it extends far beyond […]


Breaking New Ground: A Sicilian Coffee Plantation, Part 2

The Morettino family has successfully cultivated a coffee plantation right in Sicily. Next on the agenda: making the island an international coffee hub. BY JOSEPH PHELANSPECIAL TO BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE Feature photo by Tomas Anton Escobar via Unsplash Editor’s note: Check out part one of this story here. Andrea Morettino’s family has proven that coffee […]


An In-Depth Look at Gruppo Cimbali’s Coffee Technician Wheel

The Coffee Technician Wheel is a new tool that helps technicians understand the complexity of coffee extraction. BY VASILEIA FANARIOTISENIOR ONLINE CORRESPONDENT Photos courtesy of Edgardo Ferrero and Espresso Academy Coffee technicians are responsible for a complex set of tasks related to the production and extraction of coffee. They manage customer requests and need to […]


Cup of Excellence to Offer El Salvador Immersion Program

The immersion experience will allow participants to grow their knowledge on Salvadoran culture and coffee varieties. BY J. MARIE CARLANBARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE Photos courtesy of Cup of Excellence Cup of Excellence is launching a new learning opportunity in 2024: the Origin Immersion Program, to be held in El Salvador from February 26 to March 5. […]

Know Your Sweeteners: Honey: Part Two

Know Your Sweeteners: Honey: Part Two

minimum dose size?

Jan 31, 2024 |

I use the Hario switch to brew my coffee and am trying to reduce my caffeine consumption. Hence I would like to brew smaller cups of coffee. I am currently using 10g of coffee with 160g of water. (1:16 Ratio) I am wondering if there is a minimum amount of coffee...

Know Your Sweeteners: Honey: Part Two

BY EMILY JOY MENESES
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE

Feature photo via Unsplash

This week we started our discussion of honey, uncovering how it’s produced, the differences between varieties of honey, and what exactly “raw honey” is. Today, we’re continuing our exploration by turning our attention to environmental concerns.

Though honey has been a café and culinary staple for as long as most of us can remember, the ingredient has come under fire in recent years, with questions of sustainability emerging. So what’s the truth—is honey actually bad for the environment? When uncovering the answer, there are a few things to consider. 

Bee on a pink flower.
While the “Save the Bees” movement has good intentions, it often places emphasis on honey bees—which only make up about 5% of the bee population. Photo by Daniel Dan via Unsplash.

“Save the Bees”: Distortions in Messaging

Chances are that you’ve heard of the “Save the Bees” movement, a call to help preserve and restore bee populations, under the pretense that bees’ pollination of flowering trees and plants is essential to maintaining biodiversity. However, in this article for Scientific American, Alison McAfee, Ph.D., a honey bee researcher and postdoctoral fellow at North Carolina State University’s Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology, points out the distortions in the campaign’s messaging and how it’s harming, rather than helping, the environment.

According to Alison, the media disproportionately covers the need for honey bees over native bees, though only about 5% of the global bee population is made up of honey-producing bees. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken up honey beekeeping as a hobby, believing it to be a conservation practice. In reality, native bees are the ones at risk of extinction and in need of attention and support. The increased presence of honey bee colonies has also led to increased competition between native bees, with honey bees monopolizing floral resources and taking sustenance away from already-in-decline native bee populations.

A wooden slat in a beehive is removed to expose the honeycomb.
Though questions of sustainability and animal rights have come up for honey production, many argue that honey is still a more sustainable sweetener than sugar. Photo by Bianca Ackermann via Unsplash.

While “Save the Bees“ has good intentions, it’s important to note that honey bees aren’t the only ones in need of saving. If biodiversity is what we’re after, we need to turn our attention to native bees, too.

A Double-Edged Sword

Even amidst concerns around honey beekeeping and honey production, it’s important to compare honey’s effect on the environment to other sweeteners. While honey has its own problems, many still point to the fact that it’s more sustainable than sugar for a number of reasons.

First off, honey production doesn’t require land cultivation the way that sugar production does. Sugarcane fields require acres of land, leading to deforestation and the destruction of thousands of animals’ natural habitats. In addition, honey production emits fewer greenhouse gasses compared to sugar production. It requires less equipment and, typically, less travel; most sugar in North America has to be imported from South and Central America, Australia, and the Caribbean.

Knowing all sides of the debate around honey, you can make informed decisions about your honey consumption. Photo by Emily Joy Meneses.

Making Choices as a Consumer

We can’t tell you what the right answer is for you when it comes to honey consumption—but, knowing the varying sides of the debate, you can make more informed decisions in your everyday life. Stay tuned for future installments of our “Know Your Sweeteners” series, where we’ll discuss molasses, agave, and more.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emily Joy Meneses (she/they) is a writer and musician based in Los Angeles. Her hobbies include foraging, cortados, vintage synths, and connecting with her Filipino roots through music, art, food, and beverage.

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The post Know Your Sweeteners: Honey: Part Two appeared first on Barista Magazine Online.

Know Your Sweeteners: Honey: Part Two

Perfect Little Beans

Chinmey Hill Coffee uses specialty-grade beans with zero primary defects (such as black beans or sour beans) and less than five secondary defects (such as broken beans). This is important because primary defects will greatly affect the taste of the coffee. Having zero defects allows the coffee to be the most optimal flavor.

Window for Optimal Flavor

Chimney Hill Coffee ships our coffee the same day it was roasted, so you will receive it before it enters the window of optimal flavor.  This means you’ll never miss the opportunity to enjoy the coffee’s peak flavor.

Coffee Ratings

Coffee undergoes many scoring processes by professionals who achieved their Q Grader certification. Coffee is first graded when it’s green. If there are defects the coffee is determined to be “not-specialty grade”. For those coffees that pass green grading, they are sample roasted and cupped. (Cupping is the official term for critically tasting and scoring coffees. The official cupping form is standard worldwide, and where the 100-point scoring system comes from.) A coffee’s dry fragrance, wet aroma, flavor, aftertaste, body, acidity, balance, and overall impression are taken into consideration while uniformity issues and defects, will lower the overall score.

Specialty Coffee

Specialty coffee, coined by Erna Knutsen in 1974, refers to a coffee that receives a quality grading score of 80 percent or higher. While “premium” or “gourmet” seem like they’re synonymous with “specialty,” they simply are marketing terms with no defined standards. Specialty coffees are grown in specific and ideal micro-climates, and have distinctive and unique flavor profiles, with little to no defects.

Third-Wave Coffee

We’re currently in the third wave of coffee. The first wave of American coffee put pre-ground, vacuum-sealed cans in kitchens across America. The second wave started with the late ‘60s introduction of Peet’s coffee (by Alfred Peet) through the proliferation of Starbucks. The third wave of coffee focuses on origin transparency, nuanced flavors, and artisan roasting. The term “third wave” is synonymous with specialty coffee.

Know Your Sweeteners: Honey: Part Two

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