Writer: Brianne Sanchez
Photographer: Duane Tinkey
Tasting honey is a sensory experience. With the right guidance, sampling botanical varieties can feel almost sacramental.
“Let it sit on your tongue,” honey sommelier Katie Flinn told me as a spoonful of complex sweetness melted in my mouth. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the flavor. The dab of dandelion honey tasted like a summer day. Like sunshine, distilled.
Flinn founded Milk & Honey Orchard and Apiary in Indianola after a career in the military and loves to help people sample honey from her hives. Whether she’s at a farmers market, leading an event at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden or collaborating with chefs for honey-themed dinners, Flinn likes to talk up the properties that make her locally produced honey special.
“We take our hives to different areas when nectars are flowing,” she said. “We’re in our fourth season and, last season, we pulled eight unifloral honeys.”
Unlike commodity honey, which is combined from multiple sources and pasteurized, Flinn’s operation pulls and spins honey from hives of bees that feed on a singular type of pollen. Unifloral honey from dandelions, for example, or blossoming trees like locusts, lindens and chestnuts, each have unique qualities that a trained tongue can detect.
Have you ever attended a wine tasting? Sampling honey is similar. It’s often professionally evaluated in a wine glass, but when Flinn guided me through the steps, we made do with a small plastic container.
Holding the base of the vessel helps melt the crystals and sweeten the flavor. Then stir the honey to release the aromas. Notice the color and viscosity before taking a big sniff. The differences in the honey’s molecular structure influences its texture, Flinn said. Blueberry honey has medium-sized crystals that burst in your mouth. Dandelion honey’s ammonia scent can be off-putting at first.
When you taste a small amount, try to hold it on your tongue. Flinn said sunflower honey tastes like apricot jam.
Becoming a beekeeper
Flinn’s personal interest in honey started with a collection she gathered while serving in the U.S. Air Force. She enlisted after 9/11 and spent 18 years in the military, mostly in IT security forces where she deployed internationally.
“Every place I went, I would get a jar of honey,” Flinn said. In the Middle East, “you have what’s called ‘sidr’ honey, which is warm and spicy. I worked in Australia with the Royal Australian Air Force, and they had this beautiful orange blossom honey. I had this fascination with different flavors, but I didn’t know they also existed here [in the United States].”
Her second career as a beekeeper and honey sommelier came somewhat as a surprise. When she and her husband, Wade, retired from the military, they weren’t quite sure what was next.
She’d been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and had enrolled in Heroes to Hives, an online program that Michigan State University Extension offers to teach veterans about beekeeping, for both professional and community development. In 2020, the Flinns also began searching for their ideal rural property, a place where they could raise their four kids and where Katie could practice beekeeping.
“You could call it divine intervention: We found this acreage and they accepted our offer,” she said. When the seller asked if they’d like to keep the existing beehive on the property, serendipity met opportunity. “It was this sign that ‘Yes, you’re going to start keeping.’ So we hit it hard.” Soon, the Flinns were tending 60 hives.
Training her taste buds
Intrigued by the color (nearly clear) and flavor (like apples and pears) of her first harvest, Flinn started researching honey varieties online. She wanted to know why her honey was so different from anything she’d ever tasted.
“I stumbled on this ‘Introduction to Honey Sensory Analysis,’” Flinn said of a course she found online. She said it “seemed scammy” at first, but she took the risk and paid a deposit for the class in Bologna, Italy, that would introduce her to an elite group of international honey sommeliers with an elaborate name: The Italian Register of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey. She also began pursuing an advanced degree in gastronomy through Boston University.
Flinn had spent two years of her military service in culinary arts, which helped spark her passion for travel and apiarist aspirations. Within the first few years of launching Milk & Honey Orchard and Apiary, she forged partnerships with producers like Lone Oaks Farm near Winterset. They collaborated on a honey-themed “hive to table” dinner last October.
“I like to make nutrient-dense food,” said chef Aaron Holt, who catered the dinner. “Honey brings a natural sweetness.”
Luann Gilman, who co-owns Lone Oaks Farm, met Flinn during a honey-tasting event in Milo, a few miles southwest of Indianola. “We’ve really connected,” Gilman said. “I find her story so fascinating. She’s so passionate about everything, and I love the apitherapy part of her work.”
Apitherapy uses honeybees and their products for healing. Some people use local honey as a remedy for allergies or other ailments. Flinn herself has incorporated her bees and honey into daily rituals that help her cope with PTSD. When it’s cold, she begins her mornings burning a beeswax candle. During warmer months, she’ll drink coffee while watching her bees’ flight patterns from the porch.
“When they’re flying, the synchronized patterns help PTSD patients to refocus where their brain is at that moment,” she said. Handling the hives requires her complete attention. “When you hear that humming and buzzing of the bees, it puts me at this immediate calm. I will literally feel my rage dissipate as soon as I start.”
Honey sensory techniques can help anyone focus, whether or not they have a specific diagnosis. Gilman said guests at the honey-themed dinner last fall at Lone Oaks Farm developed a deeper appreciation for single-source honey, the entire meal and the whole world that produced it.
At the end of the night, she said, she walked outside and saw the northern lights. “It was a storybook ending to a magical night.”
Hive to table
Honey sommelier Katie Flinn and Lone Oaks Farm north of Winterset are expanding their series of artisanal honey dinners in 2025, with events planned for June 14, Aug. 9 and Oct. 18. Single tickets are $150 online at loneoaksfarmia.com.
Chef Aaron Holt of Catering by Doolittle Farm designs each course to highlight the flavor of a different unifloral honey. During the meal, Flinn talks about the honey’s properties and production process.
“I was blown away with the complexity of each honey and how different each one was,” Holt said about his initial tasting experience. “Certain varieties are a little more bitter, some have a lot more sugar content. The different consistencies and mouth feel you get is pretty crazy. I was a true believer from that tasting.”
For their first dinner together, Holt created a sous vide pork belly dish that used Flinn’s blueberry honey. Black locust honey, which is very light, went into a vinaigrette. The bitter notes in a chestnut honey complemented a creme brulee.
“She gave me creative freedom,” the chef said. “We did a prime rib that we honey smoked, drizzling the honey on the coals to get this caramelized honey smoke.”
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