"last year I had some golden rod honey I think, judging by the smell and it left an after taste like you had licked an old cow barn. the taste just made me think of the smell of an old cow milking barn. I thought it was AWFULL."
That make two of us. I got a flow off the golden last year. I had two honey's in my comb. One the outer portion of the frames with near white wax, and the latter, yellow wax cappings with the goldenrod honey. I extracted the all white first, then with my uncapping scratcher took the white capped honey first out of frames that were worth the effort. I filtered and bottled all the then extracted the rest. The golden granulated really fast. I opened some come spring and took a taste, not to bad, wait a second, oh my, what kinda crap is that, AWFULL! Thank goodness I tasted that before I gave any to my aunt to sell. I thought maybe it spoiled, so I tried some of the first stuff and it was fine.
I have heard many say its good honey, have read its bitter honey, have read this and that about it. Maybe it is the varity here but I sure the heck aint selling it to nobody. The bees can keep it. I have many jars of it that I will feed back to the bees this fall.