Montana Honey Tastes Like Whatever Was Blooming

Ask three people what honey tastes like and you will get one answer. Sweet. Ask a beekeeper and you will get a question back. Which honey?

We carry several, and they do not taste the same. That is not marketing, it is botany. A hive makes honey out of whatever is blooming within a few miles of it, so the flowers write the flavor. Move the hive and the honey changes.

Three ways honey can taste different

The three we sell as sticks make an easy side-by-side tasting, but there is an important distinction between them. Tumblewood's Sweet Clover & Alfalfa sticks are made with pure Montana honey, while Wildflower and Orange Blossom are part of its flavored Bumblestix line.

Wildflower adds a floral note to the honey and is an easy one to eat straight from the stick or stir into tea.

Sweet clover and alfalfa is the pure Montana option, with a mild flavor that works especially well when you want to sweeten tea without overpowering it.

Orange blossom goes brighter and more citrusy, which makes it especially good with yogurt or anywhere you want the honey to bring a little more flavor of its own.

The sticks travel well, which is the other reason we keep them. They live in a glovebox or a backpack without leaking, and they end arguments about who gets the last of the honey.

The jar we keep for ourselves

The name earns its place on a blog called Buffalo Bulletins, but that is not why it is here. It is here because it is good, and because it is the jar people come back for by name.

Creamed honey is not a lesser honey

Creamed honey confuses people who expect a jar to pour. The texture comes from controlling crystallization so the crystals stay fine instead of gritty and the honey ends up smooth and spreadable. Becky's Berries takes that texture a step further by adding huckleberries to Montana sweet clover honey.

Which makes it better than liquid honey on anything you would use a knife for. Toast, a biscuit, a cracker with something sharp on it. The huckleberry version is the one to hand somebody who says they do not like honey, because it does not read as honey until the second bite.

What to do with it besides toast

Honey belongs next to salt more than it belongs next to sugar. Put a hard cheese and a spoon of creamed honey on the same board and both of them get better.

Cured meat works the same way. The sweet cuts the salt, the salt cuts the sweet, and neither one wins.

Questions we get

Does honey go bad? Not in any way you need to worry about. Honey found in sealed jars thousands of years old was still honey. Crystallized is not spoiled.

My honey turned solid. Did I ruin it? No. Set the jar in warm water and it comes back. Do not boil it, and do not microwave it, since heat costs you the aroma you paid for.

Which one should I start with? Wildflower, if you want something more floral. Clover, if you want pure Montana honey with a mild flavor.

Is it local? Ask at the counter. What is on the shelf moves with the season and with what the beekeepers we buy from got that year.

Where to find us

Chalet Market of Montana, 6410 Jackrabbit Ln, Belgrade, MT 59714. Call us at (406) 388-4687.