Honey tanks

What a honey tank is really for

Although we call them ripeners, in a honey house their main function is to act as settling and resting tanks. The honey already comes ripened from the hive when it's well capped; what we do here is leave it quiet for a few days so that air bubbles, foam, fine wax remains and small impurities rise. That resting helps a lot for the honey to reach bottling cleaner, but it shouldn't be confused with filtering. The filter retains particles; the honey tank lets many impurities rise by density difference and then be removed from the surface. That's why the ideal is usually to work in a chain: extraction, sufficient filtering, resting in the honey tank, de-foaming and bottling.

My advice is to choose the honey tank thinking about the real use you're going to give it: settling, storing temporarily and bottling by hand. I wouldn't buy just by litres. I'd look at food-grade material, lid, stability, working height, ease of cleaning and, above all, the tap. To bottle directly from the honey tank, an anti-drip valve or a clean-cut ball valve changes the experience a lot: fewer stains, better filling control and less time lost between jars. If you work dense or cold honeys, I'd consider a heated model or controlling the ambient temperature better, because a very viscous honey settles worse and flows worse. And here I'll take a clear stand: I wouldn't filter finer than necessary just to leave the honey visually “perfect”. A reasonable filtering cleans the honey without destroying its identity; one that's too aggressive can impoverish it and remove part of the pollen information that helps identify its origin. A good honey tank doesn't fix a badly harvested honey, but it does help you work cleaner, rest it better and bottle with much more professionalism.