German Honey Guidelines (Leitsätze)
Lexikon
The German Honey Guidelines (Leitsätze für Honig) are part of the German Food Code (Deutsches Lebensmittelbuch) and describe what is generally understood, by common trade practice, under specific designations such as acacia honey, rapeseed honey or forest honey.
The German Honey Guidelines (Leitsätze für Honig) are part of the German Food Code (Deutsches Lebensmittelbuch) and describe what is generally understood, by common trade practice, under specific designations such as acacia honey, rapeseed honey or forest honey. Unlike the Honey Regulation, they are not binding law but a description of good professional practice drawn up by an expert commission, which is used as an interpretive aid in disputes and inspections in Germany. They thus supplement the legal definition of honey with concrete characteristics for individual varieties and with voluntary quality grades.
Particularly relevant in practice are the two quality grades Auslese and Premium defined in the guidelines. The Auslese grade requires a water content of at most 18 percent, an HMF content of at most 15 milligrams per kilogram, and an invertase activity of at least 60 units per kilogram; the higher Premium, or feine Auslese, grade sets even stricter values, with at most 10 milligrams of HMF and at least 85 units of invertase. For heather honey, a water content of up to 19 percent is permitted in both grades, because this honey naturally contains more water.
The guidelines also contain detailed profiles for individual varietal honeys, describing typical color, smell, taste and texture as well as microscopic and chemical-physical characteristic values, such as the minimum share of certain pollen or the typical electrical conductivity. A common misunderstanding is to confuse the guidelines with the statutory Honey Regulation, or even to equate them with the still stricter association standards of the German Beekeepers' Association; in fact these are three separate levels, building on one another, with different degrees of bindingness.