If you’ve only ever purchased honey from the grocery store (particularly the version in a plastic bear), you’ve been missing out, big time. Sure, that stuff is still technically honey, but it lacks many of the complexities and nuances found in high-quality raw honey.
The best honey goes through minimal processing, isn’t pasteurized at high heat, and isn’t adulterated with other ingredients. Thankfully, such honey isn’t rare. There are also many types of honey to choose from, including clover honey, mānuka honey, orange blossom honey, buckwheat honey, and even honeydew honey.
The lighter colored ones tend to be mild and sweet, while darker honeys have a more intense flavor, sometimes with a touch of bitterness. There are also differences in flavor profiles and even texture, making each honey a truly unique experience.
Such differences in color and flavor come from the flowers the bees were pollinating. We’re not just talking about differences in the species of flower either. Where those flowers were grown, the time of year, and other factors can all subtly influence the flavor and color of honey. This is why raw honey can be different from year to year, even when produced in the same location with the same types of flowers.
P.S. There are more than 300 varieties of honey currently available, far more than we could ever cover in a single list. So, we’ve focused on the best and most popular varieties.
16 Types Of Honey
Clover Honey
Honey is named for where the pollen is collected, meaning that clover honey comes from bees collecting nectar from clover flowers. This is one of the most common types of honey, partly because bees prefer clover flowers over many other nectar sources. Clover is also resilient to changes in the weather and is easy to grow in many different locations.
Clover honey is a mild type of honey with a light color. It’s less complex than many other honeys but is still more interesting than sugar.
The mild flavor isn’t a bad thing. This makes clover honey an excellent introduction to the world of raw honey. It’s also the perfect choice when you’re using honey to sweeten a dish or hot drink and don’t want to add much extra flavor.
Orange Blossom Honey
Orange blossom honey is most often produced in warm climates, including Texas and Southern California. Here, the honey comes from the blossoms of citrus plants, leading to slight citrus notes and an interesting fruity flavor profile.
The citrus notes make this a fantastic type of honey for using in your tea or perhaps even in a cocktail.
While this honey is widely available, finding high-quality orange blossom honey requires a little work. Unfortunately, many companies rely on additives to create the citrus aroma, giving you inferior honey. To avoid this, look for companies that are transparent about their practices.
Authentic orange blossom honey should be subtle. There are certainly floral and citrus notes, but these shouldn’t overpower the natural honey flavors.
Wildflower Honey
Wildflower honey is a type of multifloral honey, meaning it comes from multiple types of flowers. Some versions were initially intended to be clover honey, but contain extra flavor notes of other kinds of flowers. Other versions place hives in completely different locations, sometimes where there is no clover nearby at all.
Wildflower honey is multifloral, meaning that it will taste very different depending on the flowers in the area. But in general, it’s relatively mild and sweet, richer, and more complex than clover honey.
If you’re buying wildflower online or from a well-known company, you should be able to find a description of the expected flavor profile. If you’re buying locally, you can probably even sample the honey first. Or, you could just take a gamble – the honey should be delicious regardless of the specific flowers at play.
Acacia Honey
Acacia honey is another mild light colored honey. It’s naturally floral with slight vanilla notes that make it even more delicious.
This type of honey is also high in fructose and crystallizes slower than many other honeys. This means it stays as a liquid, rather than becoming grainy over time. The slow crystallization and mild flavor make this an excellent choice for anyone new to raw honey.
The name is a little confusing here, as acacia honey doesn’t actually come from acacia trees. It comes from the false acacia tree instead, which is also called the black locust tree. Because of this, you’ll sometimes see the honey called locust honey rather than acacia honey.
Alfalfa Honey
Alfalfa honey is common in the United States, where the nectar is gathered from yellow, purple, and blue alfalfa flowers. The honey often has a light amber color, although the color and flavor profile can vary, partly based on the variety of alfalfa flowers the bees were harvesting.
The honey is sweet, but not as intensely as many other varieties. There are also subtle underlying vanilla notes that make the honey even more enjoyable.
This is a tricky type of honey for beekeepers, as alfalfa plants are often grown for livestock feed and cut around the time of flowering. That’s not good news for the bees, nor is the shape of the alfalfa flower, which makes it difficult to get nectar. Still, even with such challenges, alfalfa honey is regularly produced and is certainly enjoyable.
Mānuka Honey
Mānuka honey is famous for being potent, offering more potential medicinal benefits than most other types of honey. It’s excellent for cough relief and has even been linked to wound healing and acne treatment. The honey itself is produced in New Zealand and exported throughout the world.
The honey is often graded through a UMF scale (which stands for Unique Manuka Factor). Honey can be graded between UMF 5+ and UMF 20+ on the scale, with higher numbers indicating higher levels of beneficial compounds. Of course, the high UMF versions of mānuka honey are also the most expensive.
The potential benefits aren’t the only reason mānuka stands out. The honey is also dark with a distinct mineral taste. While some people love the flavor, many others find it disappointing.
That said, there are debates about the real-life practical benefits of mānuka honey versus the marketing hype. The average consumer is likely to do just as well with to regular honey, rather than shelling out for top-of-the-line manuka.
Tupelo Honey
Tupelo honey is rare indeed, partly because tupelo trees only bloom for a few weeks every year. The honey is surprisingly sweet, more so than most other types. It also has a light color and flavor, so the honey is best enjoyed on its own or with mild accompanying ingredients.
While the flavor is light, there are some interesting notes to talk about, including a pear-like aroma and even a hoppy aftertaste. The intensity of these flavors varies from harvest to harvest, although the honey is delicious in all cases.
Tupelo honey is expensive and subtle, so it isn’t an ingredient for complex recipes. Try serving it on a charcuterie board with high-quality accompaniments instead.
Eucalyptus Honey
Eucalyptus honey hails from Australia, although it is now also produced in South Africa and California. The honey is moderately sweet, with distinct herbal notes and caramel flavors.
There’s even a touch of menthol to the flavor profile. This isn’t overbearing and means the honey works well as a sweetener for tea and in hot toddies.
Now, the term eucalyptus doesn’t just refer to a single type of tree. Eucalyptus is a genus instead and encompasses more than 660 species of plant. Because of this, the flavor of eucalyptus honey can vary considerably depending on the eucalyptus species.
Saw Palmetto Honey
This is a rare type of honey, partly because the saw palmetto plant grows slowly. It also has a short flowering window, giving bees a short time to access the nectar.
Still, saw palmetto honey is worth pursuing, as it has a distinct and delicious flavor that includes smoky and caramel notes. The flavor profile makes saw palmetto honey an excellent addition to charcuterie boards, especially if you’re also including some strong cheeses.
More than that, the honey’s flavor even holds up in strong teas, marinades, and coffee (which isn’t the case for many other types of honey). This is perfect if you’re after flavor along with sweetness.
Sourwood Honey
Sourwood honey stands out for its rich flavors and complexity. Flavor notes can include caramel, cinnamon, cloves, and even anise. The flavor is such that good batches are considered some of the best honey in the world.
This is a rare, expensive, and nuanced honey, so it’s not a great choice for baking or many hot drinks. It’s a honey to be savored instead, one you won’t regret trying for yourself.
Blackberry Honey
Blackberry honey is mostly what the name suggests, in that the nectar comes from blackberry blossoms. However, bees may also forage from other Rubus species, including raspberries and black raspberries.
The honey tends to be lightly colored, with a delicate aroma and flavor. There are also some subtle berry notes, reminiscent of blackberries.
That said, some beekeepers end up with darkly colored blackberry honey instead, which may have different flavor notes. The darker versions could be the results of bees foraging on other types of flowers as well.
Fireweed
Fireweed is sometimes called the champagne of honey, as it is lightly colored with a mild and delicate flavor profile. The flavor and texture of the honey make it popular for toast or spreading on warm biscuits. Doing so allows you to enjoy all the honey’s nuances.
This is a rare type of honey, as fireweed is an invasive plant species that emerges soon after an environmental disaster like a fire. This means that beekeepers need to basically chase fires in order to produce the honey – and sometimes other wildflowers will grow at a similar time, making it difficult to get pure firewood honey.
Still, beekeepers are sometimes successful, resulting in delicious fireweed honey.
Buckwheat Honey
Buckwheat is a dark colored honey with a very strong taste and scent. It’s often described as being malty, with flavors reminiscent of molasses or raisins. There’s a subtle bitterness to the honey as well. This doesn’t stop it from being sweet, but does make the sweetness much more complex.
Not surprisingly, opinions of the honey differ considerably. Some people love it. Others, not so much. Erick and Derrick from the video at the beginning of this post weren’t fans. They even talked about an unexpected aftertaste and a smell that reminded them of feet.
Still, the strong flavor of buckwheat honey makes it a great ingredient in some recipes. You can even use it in marinades without the flavor getting lost.
Chestnut Honey
Like buckwheat honey, you’ll either love chestnut honey or you’ll hate it. The honey has a unique taste that includes smoky and spicy notes, along with an unexpected leather-like flavor. It even has a bitter aftertaste, ensuring you won’t forget the honey any time soon.
The flavor profile does vary considerably, making some versions of chestnut honey more intense than others. But, even the milder versions are a far cry from the simple sweet honey that many people love.
If you find the flavor too intense on its own, try including chestnut honey in baking or as part of a savory dish (like a glaze for salmon).
Lavender Honey
Then there’s lavender honey. This specialty honey is harder to find and more expensive than options like clover and wildflower, but is also worth the higher price tag.
Not surprisingly, bees forage on lavender flowers to make this honey, which leads to some subtle lavender notes in the honey itself. It is also thought to have calming properties due to some compounds from the lavender.
That said, don’t expect lavender honey to taste exactly like lavender. Honey generally just takes on subtle flavors from flowers, not dramatic ones.
Honeydew Honey
Honeydew honey breaks away from most expectations. While still produced by bees, the honey is notable in that no flowers are involved.
Instead, bees are collecting nectar that is produced by insects. Beech honeydew honey is a particularly famous version (it’s sometimes known as beechwood honey instead). This is produced in the south of New Zealand from scale insects that inhabit beech trees.
The honey tends to be dark and has a stronger flavor than many other honeys, often with a slight woody aftertaste. Also, because the nectar is sourced from insects, honeydew honey tends to be fairly pollen free.
Processing Differences
Pasteurized Honey
Pasteurization involves heating honey to a specific temperature to kill natural yeasts and make the honey safer. Doing so decreases the risk of fermentation, improves the shelf life, and slows crystallization.
Yet, pasteurization isn’t as crucial as it is for milk and similar products. Honey has natural antibiotic properties, so it doesn’t spoil easily, even without pasteurization.
Ultra Filtered Honey
Filtering is another common processing step that helps to remove debris and impurities. While some filtering is important for the taste and texture of the honey, too much can be an issue.
Notably, some companies use an approach called ultra filtration. This removes many desirable features of honey, like proteins and enzymes. The flavor and texture of the honey may change as well.
Blended Honey
Much of the honey found in local stores is blended. This means it is made from at least two different types of honey.
Blending honey allows companies to create specific flavor profiles. For example, an intense honey such as mānuka might be blended with a milder one like clover to create an intermediate intensity. Blending sometimes helps companies save money as well, especially when dealing with expensive types of honey.
Beyond this, blending helps create consistency – helping ensure every batch of the honey tastes the same (or close to it). You don’t get this type of consistency with raw honey.
Notably, many commercial honey products have been pasteurized, ultra filtered, and blended. This combination of approaches creates predictable and somewhat dull honey – honey that misses the differences and flavor nuances of raw honey.
Creamed Honey
It’s easy to assume that creamed honey is highly processed. Yet, the texture of creamed honey doesn’t come from additives.
The honey is created by taking advantage of honey’s natural crystallization process. Beekeepers mix raw honey with a small amount of crystallized honey, cool and rest the mixture, then carefully stir it to break up sugar crystals and create the creamed texture.
The texture of creamed honey makes it fantastic for spreading on toast or cornbread. Plus, because creamed honey simply starts as raw honey, there are many different delicious variations.
Raw Honey
Raw honey hasn’t been through pasteurization, giving it more natural enzymes and antioxidants – potentially leading to more health benefits.
That’s not all. The honey is also generally produced by companies with a focus on natural and healthy foods. As such, raw honey is less likely to be filtered or adulterated than pasteurized honey.
Because there’s no pasteurization, raw honey shouldn’t be given to infants or to people with compromised immune systems. However, it should be completely safe for healthy adults.
Organic Honey
For honey to be organic, the pollen gathered must come from organically grown pesticide-free plants, while bees must also be treated following specific protocols. This is extremely difficult to achieve in practice, as bees often fly two miles in each direction of their hive. They occasionally have longer flights, sometimes as far as six miles away from home.
Such flights encompass a huge number of plants. For honey to truly be organic, all of these plants should be organic. This is most likely when honey is produced in remote areas with little agriculture, although it can happen in other situations too.
Finding authentic organic honey is another challenge, as many companies use the word organic without any certification. Indeed, much of the time, organic is simply used as a marketing term and doesn’t say much about the honey at all.
So, instead of looking for organic on the label, you may have more luck focusing on companies that are transparent about where their bees forage and how the hives are looked after. This tells you much more about the honey than a label like organic, which might not even be legitimate.
Infused Honey
Infused honey starts as regular honey and is then infused with flavors from herbs, spices, fruits, or other ingredients. Cinnamon honey and hot honey are popular examples, but there’s no end to the possible flavor combinations.
If you’re making infused honey yourself, start with honey you enjoy that isn’t too intensely flavored. Clover or wildflower honey are excellent choices, especially as they’re both pretty inexpensive.
Things can be a little confusing if you’re purchasing honey. For example, lavender honey is sourced from lavender plants and has faint lavender notes. But, you can also infuse regular honey with lavender, creating a more intense lavender flavor.
Because of this, it’s important to look out for the term ‘infused’ on the honey packaging. This way you know what to expect before spending any money.