I Didn't Think I Was a Honey Person Either.

I respected honey from a distance for years. Then I started making our Hot Honey.

Two Spice Witch Hot Honey squeeze bottles

Here is something I have only recently been willing to say out loud. I was not really a honey person.

For most of my adult life, honey was a thing I associated with bad tea, brunch biscuits at restaurants I did not want to be at, and one very specific bear shaped bottle in the back of my pantry that lasted four years.

Honey was a thing other people loved. I respected it from a distance.

And then I started making our Hot Honey.

I started making it because I wanted heat that did not feel like a punch in the face. I wanted slow built warmth, the kind that builds on your tongue and stays a beat longer than you expect. Hot honey was the format. Real ingredients was the rule. No corn syrup, no fillers, no shortcuts. Just honey, our blend, and a kitchen that takes its sweet time.

The first batch I made and brought home, I sat at my counter and ate it off a spoon like a feral child. Then I drizzled it on a piece of cornbread, then on cheap pizza, then directly on a wedge of sharp cheddar, and then I texted three friends.

That is when I realized I am not a honey person in the abstract. I am a Spice Witch Hot Honey person, which is a much smaller and more specific thing, and a much better thing.

Why This Honey Is Different

Grocery store honey is one note. Our Hot Honey has architecture. The heat comes after the sweet, in a slow lean, the way you hope hot food will hit you when it is well made. It works on the obvious things like biscuits, cornbread and fried chicken, and it works on the less obvious things like cheese boards, roasted carrots, and a single slice of summer watermelon with flaky salt.

If you have been skeptical of the hot honey trend because every brand seems to be doing it now, I get it. But the trend got loud because the format works. The format is sweet meets heat, slow and layered. Most bottles do not pull it off. Ours does. (Said as the woman who makes it. I am biased. I am also right.)