LYSON Classic Line honey bottler with gear module

01 · SETTING UP

The gear pump has to be primed before the first dose

The two gears trap honey between their teeth and the housing and push it out at a continuous flow, with no pulsing — exactly what you want with dense honeys. In exchange it will not start dry: the rotor must be coated in honey and you pour about 1 kg into the free end of the hose —a 950 g jar— until it reaches the pump; the hose is clear, so you can watch it come. A short run then clears any air left in the line: bottling with bubbles is what later leaves that white frosting against the glass. The pump lifts honey up to 2 m, but the tank must never sit below the machine — between doses the honey would drain back into the honey tank and the module would draw air again.

02 · DOSING

Weigh the first jar every time you change honey

The controller works with three settings, all kept when you switch off: the dose mass, the filling speed and the reverse time, which sucks the thread of honey back at the end of the cycle so the nozzle does not drip on the rim. The dose is measured by gear rotation, not by weight, so every change of honey, batch or temperature calls for a check on the scales: between an orange blossom and a forest honey the difference in density runs into tens of grams per jar. That is what the two correction factors are for, adding or subtracting gram by gram. You trigger each fill with the foot pedal or the limit switch, without letting go of the jar.

03 · CREAMING

What the machine adds to creamed honey and what the cold room still does

Creamed honey has nothing added to it: it is controlled crystallisation, so the crystal stays fine and the texture spreadable. You seed the base honey with 5-10 % of finely crystallised honey and then hold it around 14 °C, where the texture finishes forming over two weeks or more. What the machine contributes is the re-pumping: it moves honey from one vessel to another spreading the seed without whipping or aerating it, several times a day over the first few days. Put as the manufacturer puts it, it creams, but that is not its main job: it replaces neither a creamer nor the crystallisation room. Swap the dosing nozzle for the pumping one before you start.

04 · CLEANING

Forty litres of hot water at the end of the session

With nothing dismantled, put the suction hose into a container of hot water and pump about 40 litres at 50-60 °C through it: that carries away the honey left in the module and the nozzle. Then comes the real strip-down —cover, gears, dosing module and nozzle, the last with a 22 mm spanner— to wash with food-safe detergent, rinse and dry. Everything that touches honey is stainless steel or food-grade plastic. Do it the same day: honey left to crystallise inside can burst the rotor seal, and the manufacturer excludes that damage from the guarantee.

FROM THE APIARY

Tighten the four screws of the module cover crosswise, like a car wheel. Done one after another, the cover seats crooked on the gasket and the module starts drawing air halfway through the batch.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

You get the machine with its work top, the foot pedal, the limit switch and the 1.5 m hose with its connector, coupling and clamp. It weighs 24 kg and takes up 40 × 40 cm of bench by 57 cm high, so give it a fixed spot and a 230 V socket. The full manual, in six languages, is downloadable below.