With pain in my soul I have to admit that in Lately Counterfeit ones are increasingly found on sale, adulterated honey.
There are people who are ready to do any meanness for the sake of money. They use honey of unknown origin and questionable quality. After all, even with the help of bees you can make adulterated honey. For example, give it to bees and they will process it into honey
It will be delicious honey, but it won’t have that vital energy, which goes through the bee from the flower to the person. The only advantage of this honey is that it is easily absorbed by our gastrointestinal tract.
Let me give you another example: sugar is dissolved in hot water, and for “smell” a little honey is added and sold. In one of the articles I read that some “craftsmen” add to sugar syrup a drop of rose oil, throw in pieces of honeycomb, dead bees, infuse, filter, package.
Moreover, these cunning people throw out such a surrogate at a time when it is already on sale. It is also liquid immediately after pumping, and a gullible buyer will not always immediately understand the deception.
If the honey is natural and mature, then by scooping it up with a spoon and swirling it, the honey will wrap around the spoon in layers of ribbon. And when it drips from a spoon like jelly, it’s a fake.
In winter, honey cannot be liquid. Liquid honey in winter is heated honey, and this is evidenced by the smell of candy or burnt sugar. This honey is clearly overheated and is dangerous to eat. After all, at temperatures of 45-50ºС and above, carcinogenic substances appear in honey. And healing enzymes and vitamins disappear completely. Even drinking tea with high-quality natural honey is better as a “bite”, since in a hot drink the healing properties of this honey are lost.
With the help of simple tests you can determine whether you got a fake. Dissolve a spoonful of honey in a glass of water. The solution should be slightly cloudy, but without sediment. In the presence of impurities, a precipitate always forms.
Flour and starch are “calculated” by adding a drop of iodine to a small amount of honey diluted with water. If the solution turns blue, there is flour or starch in the honey. If, instead of iodine, you add a little vinegar essence to a solution of water and honey, and the solution hisses, then there is chalk in the honey. Unnaturally light honey is produced when bees are fed sugar syrup or molasses. All these are 100% cases of honey falsification.
A few years ago, gypsies walked through our village. I was sitting on a bench near the house. Trade women came up to me and offered me honey in three-liter glass jars at a reasonable price. The price of honey is much lower than in our area. Honey is liquid. And imagine my surprise when I was offered to taste the quality of honey right through the edge of the jar. How can you be so careless about the priceless gift of nature!?
The person selling natural honey knows its value and will give it to you to try with a small spoon, carefully and leisurely. Moreover, those who sell “correct” honey never run around villages, there is no end to buyers, and they have no time to run. I don’t need to explain to you that the gypsy women’s honey was fake.
Let me give you another example. A beekeeper I know told me that in the summer beekeepers from afar come to their village to roam in KAMAZ trucks. Bees fly to flowers, carry nectar, and next to the hives whole bags of dry sugar are poured onto cellophane and there are drinking bowls with grape juice and water. These beekeepers do not have time to pump honey. But this is not natural honey, but fake honey, although it is no longer sugar syrup. This is an obvious pursuit of money, falsification.
I believe that the beekeeper and seller should have high responsibility for the quality of honey. Intermediaries are not interested in quality, the main thing for them is to buy more, pay less, then sell the fake honey at a higher price and get a considerable income.
Is it possible to buy honey by hand? Only if you are sure what exactly you are buying. The most common honey adulterator is sugar syrup. Unripe honey is often diluted with the same syrup to give it the missing sweetness. First, the honey must be mature. After all, bees work on nectar for about a week: they evaporate the water, enrich it with enzymes, and break down complex sugars into simple ones. During this time, the honey is infused. The bees seal the finished product with wax caps - this is the kind of honey that has all its beneficial properties and can be stored for a long time.
Very often, beekeepers pump out honey during honey collection, without waiting for it to ripen, due to a lack of honeycombs. The water content in such honey is sometimes twice the norm, it is little enriched with enzymes and sucrose, and quickly sours.
To determine the maturity of honey, it is heated to 20 degrees, stirring with a spoon. Then the spoon is taken out and started to rotate. Ripe honey wraps around her. It may become sugary over time, this is normal. If you want to return it to its previous state, heat it slightly in a water bath. But sometimes this provokes further souring.
Using simple tests you can determine whether honey is adulterated. Flour and starch are determined by adding a drop of iodine to a small amount of honey diluted with water. If the solution turns blue, honey with flour or starch. If the solution hisses when adding vinegar essence, there is chalk in the honey. If in 5-10% percent aqueous solution honey, when a small amount of lapis is added, a white precipitate appears - sugar has been added.
How can you determine the quality of honey?
By color
Each type of honey has its own color, unique to it. Flower honey is light yellow, linden honey is amber, ash honey is transparent, like water, buckwheat has different shades Brown. Pure honey without impurities is usually transparent, no matter what color it is.
Honey, which contains additives (sugar, starch, other impurities), is cloudy, and if you look closely, you can find sediment in it.
By aroma
Real honey has a fragrant aroma. This smell is incomparable. Honey mixed with sugar has no aroma, and its taste is close to the taste of sweetened water.
By viscosity
Take honey for testing by lowering a thin stick into the container. If this is real honey, then it follows the stick as a long continuous thread, and when this thread is broken, it will completely descend, forming a tower, a pagoda on the surface of the honey, which will then slowly disperse.
Fake honey will behave like glue: it will flow abundantly and drip down from the stick, forming splashes.
By consistency
In real honey it is thin and delicate. Honey is easily rubbed between your fingers and absorbed into the skin, which cannot be said about a fake. Adulterated honey has a rough texture; when rubbed, lumps remain on your fingers.
Before buying honey in reserve at the market, take the product you like from 2-3 regular sellers. To start, 100 grams each. Do the recommended quality tests at home and only then buy it for future use from the same sellers.
Check if water and sugar have been added to honey
To do this, drop honey on a sheet of low-grade paper that absorbs moisture well. If it spreads across the paper, forming wet spots, or even seeps through it, it is fake honey.
Determine whether honey contains starch. To do this, put a little honey in a glass, pour boiling water, stir and cool. After this, add a few drops of iodine there. If the composition turns blue, it means that starch has been added to the honey. This is fake honey.
Find out if there are other impurities in honey
To do this, take a hot wire (stainless steel) and dip it in honey. If a sticky foreign mass hangs on it, you have fake honey, but if the wire remains clean, the honey is natural or, in other words, full-fledged.
What should you pay attention to after purchasing honey?
Honey should not be stored in metal containers, since the acids contained in its composition can oxidize. This will lead to an increase in the content of heavy metals in it and a decrease in useful substances. This honey can cause discomfort in the stomach and even lead to poisoning.
Honey is stored in glass, clay, porcelain, ceramic and wooden containers.
Honey contains 65-80% fructose and sucrose, it is rich in vitamin C, in addition, it contains almost all minerals. Therefore, consuming honey with warm water or when heating candied honey, do not bring the temperature to 60 degrees - this is the limit after which the structure of honey disintegrates, the color changes, the aroma disappears, and the vitamin C that can live in honey long years, is destroyed by half or more.
How else can you spot a fake?
Add a little of what you bought under the guise of honey to a cup of weak, warm tea. If you were not deceived, the tea will darken, but no sediment will form at the bottom.
Over time, honey becomes cloudy and thickens - and this is a sure sign of good quality. And not, as many people mistakenly believe, that the honey has gone bad.
If even after years your honey has not thickened, it means that it contains a large amount of fructose and, alas, does not have healing properties. Sometimes honey during storage is divided into two layers: it thickens only at the bottom, and remains liquid at the top. This indicates that it is unripe and should therefore be eaten as quickly as possible - unripe honey only lasts for a few months.
Careless beekeepers do not take bees out to collect nectar, but simply feed them sugar. Sugar honey is unnatural. There is nothing useful in it. This honey is unnaturally white. Published by ruslife.org.ua
Real honey contains no water. Honey with syrup has high humidity - this can be checked in the following way. Dip a piece of bread into honey, and after 8-10 minutes, take it out. High-quality honey will harden the bread. If, on the contrary, it has softened or completely spread out, then this is nothing more than sugar syrup.
But no one on the market will allow you to conduct such experiments, but they will let you try. Often honey is dripped onto a small piece of paper for tasting. This is quite enough to conduct another experiment. When going to the market to buy honey, take a chemical pencil with you. Smear the honey on a piece of paper with a pencil, you can smear it with your finger, and on the “honey” strip try to write something with a chemical pencil. If after a few seconds an inscription or streaks appear of blue color, you can confidently and loudly tell the seller (so that other customers can hear) that the product contains starch or flour. If you don't have a chemical pencil, a drop of iodine will do. The same blue tint of the proposed honey will unmistakably identify the starch and flour in the product.
Which honey is better - mountain honey or, let's say, lowland honey?
Don't fall for the bait when they try to convince you that mountain honey better than that, which bees collect in our open spaces. Mountain honey has no special advantages over plain honey. Honey quality and concentration useful substances it depends only on the decency and knowledge of the beekeeper, as well as on the environmental situation of the honey collection area. Here, however, there is a difference between honey collected in a clean environment and what bees collected from the flower beds of an industrial enterprise. But here too everything depends on the beekeeper. His conscience should not allow him to make money from “industrial” honey.
From sellers useful product there are several tricks
First, close your ears and don't listen to what they tell you. For a bunch of liars, of course, one honest seller may fall for one, but how do you know that the one standing in front of you is honest? Try honey not only from the top, but also from the bottom of the jar. Feel free to put a spoon into the jar and don’t listen to the sellers who start shouting: “Don’t spoil the product!”
Honey is an antiseptic, and a clean spoon in a jar cannot spoil it. It’s another matter if it’s not honey at the bottom.
Do not buy unchecked or rolled honey from the market. It is a myth that honey is best stored with a tin lid.
Crystallization is a natural process of honey, which does not affect its quality and composition of nutrients. Don't be fooled by crystallized honey. Do not come the next day to the seller who promised you non-crystallized honey. They will bring the same thing, but warmed up. But you can’t heat honey. For those who prefer honey liquid form, we must take this fact into account. Place the jar of honey in warm water. When the water cools down, change it. Gradually the honey will melt.
Real honey has the following characteristics:
High-quality honey does not roll off the spoon too quickly. Take a tablespoon of honey and turn the spoon several times in a quick circular motion. The honey will roll over it, almost without draining into the jar.
Dip a spoon into the container with honey. When pulling out the spoon, evaluate the nature of the swelling of the honey. A good one will form a ribbon, sit in a mound, and bubbles will form on its surface.
All types of honey have a sweet taste, but some varieties have a specific taste. For example, tobacco, chestnut and willow varieties have a bitter taste, while heather is astringent. Any deviations in the taste of honey indicate its poor quality. Other flavor defects may be due to the presence of impurities. Excessive acidity may be associated with the onset of fermentation, the aroma of caramel is the result of heating, obvious bitterness is due to incorrect storage conditions for a low-quality product.
The color of honey depends solely on the variety. And here there can be all shades of brown and yellow flowers. Do not be alarmed by pale yellow, slightly cloudy honey - this is normal for acacia honey.
And here's another:
When buying honey, do an experiment: scoop it up with a spoon, swirl it around and watch how it flows. If the honey is mature and of high quality, then it is viscous, thick and does not drip from the spoon, but is wound on it with a viscous ribbon. This state of honey is also noticeable when pouring it from one container to another - the stream of natural honey should be continuous and form folds like the bellows of an accordion. In other words, good honey should be neither too thin nor too thick. Another feature: natural honey must be completely homogeneous in both color and consistency. And some more subtleties regarding the color of honey. They say that the quality of honey with a reddish tint - spring and summer - is better, and that of autumn and winter - worse.
There are other ways to determine the quality of honey. Add a little honey to a cup of weak, warm tea. If it is not fake, then the solution of tea with honey will darken and there will be no sediment in it. And in general, make it a rule not to buy a lot of honey at once from unfamiliar merchants. Take 100-200 grams of honey and check its quality at home, and then decide whether to buy such honey or not.
Many honey lovers have accumulated in their arsenal many other ways to determine its quality. Here are some of them:
if the honey is very white, then it is not natural, but sugar - some beekeepers feed the bees sugar;
strong and well-crystallized honey is easily rubbed between your fingers and, like grains of ghee, should melt quickly;
if the aroma of honey is dull and the taste of caramel is felt, then it is molten honey;
hold a spoonful of honey on the fire and look at it: natural honey should not burn with a blue flame, it will gradually char;
dip raw in honey egg– if it does not sink, the honey is good, undiluted;
do not dissolve a large number of honey in hot milk - if the milk curdles, it means the honey has been diluted with sugar syrup.
Honey is perhaps the most popular food product, when purchasing which, first of all, its naturalness is checked. In a variety of sources (books, magazines, the Internet, television) you can find a sea of useful (and not so useful) information on the right choice honey
This article attempts to collect the most useful and effective tips To determine the quality of honey, emphasis is placed on the ease of perception of information. A table is presented. You can also learn the nuances of proper storage.
To choose high-quality honey, you need to understand what it is like.
Natural honey is nectar that has been processed by the bee’s body. If instead of nectar the bee uses other plant secretions (honeydew), then such honey can be called partially natural.
Honeydew is practically not inferior in terms of the content of useful substances, but is stored very poorly, quickly sours and ferments. Externally, it can be distinguished by its darker color and weak specific aroma (or lack thereof).
Unnatural or low-quality honey is obtained as a result of errors or fraud in its production and sale. Both beekeepers and sellers may be responsible for this.
Artificial honey is obtained as a result of evaporation of juice, etc., as well as as a result of the process of hydrolysis with acid (citric or other) of beet or cane sugar.
What types of unnatural (counterfeit) honey can a buyer encounter?
Sugar honey
Instead of collecting nectar, the bees are fed sugar syrup. This honey does not have a distinct aroma, lacks astringency, does not crystallize well, and may have a jelly-like consistency.
Unripe or diluted honey
It has a high water content (the norm is no more than 21% water). It deteriorates quickly and crystallizes unevenly. Sometimes you can see foam on the surface.
Honey with additives
To make unnatural honey look natural, unscrupulous manufacturers add various additives: starch, chalk, gelatin and even sand and sawdust.
Often they mix unnatural honey with natural honey. Externally, it can be distinguished by its heterogeneity. Usually natural honey is poured on top.
Heated
To attract buyers appearance, sellers very often heat honey. Crystallization of natural honey occurs during the first 2 months (the only exceptions are acacia and chestnut honey), so you should be wary of liquid honey outside the harvesting season.
"Sick" honey
Unhealthy bees can be fed medications, various antibiotics, the presence of which in honey can only be determined in a laboratory. In this case, one piece of advice is to buy only from a trusted place with a quality certificate or from an honest beekeeper.
Honey from environmentally polluted places
Always find out where the honey comes from and what the environmental situation is at the location of the apiary.
Try to buy honey in one specific, trusted place. If you are choosing for the first time in an unfamiliar place, first purchase the product in small quantities to check its quality.
It is difficult to reliably determine the quality of honey directly at the point of purchase, so take it home to sample.
We advise you to use the table below, which shows practical ways to check the quality of honey.
Having gone through all the specified verification steps, you can be sure that you have done everything in your power. Only professional laboratory analysis can determine quality more accurately.
Table - Methods for checking honey quality
| Description of the method for checking the quality of honey | Signs of natural benign honey | Signs of unnatural, low-quality honey | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Determine how the honey flows (if it has not thickened yet) | The honey does not drip, but flows continuously. The last drop tightens and springs. | The stream breaks, drips, splashes | Definition of maturity |
| Determine the color of honey and its uniformity | Homogeneous, no stains | Spotted, striped or cloudy (when liquid) | If the honey is white, it may be supplemented with sugar (sugar honey) |
| Dilute honey in hot | Won't curl up | will curl up | Identifying Sugar Honey |
| Determine consistency (taste by touch, rub with fingers) | The honey is gentle, not rough. Rubs on and is easily absorbed | Rough consistency. When rubbed, lumps remain | |
| Examine the honey in the jar | Evenly thickened | The honey was divided into two layers. The bottom is thick and the top is liquid | Detection of unripe honey |
| Turn over a jar of honey | Pop-up air bubble one | Several small bubbles float to the surface | |
| Carefully examine the surface of the honey | No bubbles or foam | Presence of bubbles and foam | The beginning of the fermentation process is a sign of immaturity or improper storage |
| Carefully examine the crystals and determine their shape (using a microscope or magnifying glass) | Star-shaped or needle-shaped. Typically, the smaller the crystals, the better the quality of honey. | Large crystals that look like lumps | |
| Stir a little honey into a cup of warm, weak tea | Will darken slightly, no precipitation | Will darken with precipitation | |
| Drip a little honey onto paper that absorbs moisture well | Will spread or ooze, creating a wet spot | ||
| Set fire to honey-smeared paper | Will melt | Will burn | If it chars, sugar syrup has been added. |
| Dip a piece of bread in honey | Will harden | The bread will soften | Detection of water and possibly sugar syrup |
| Grind a little honey on any surface and run a chemical pencil over it | Regular trail | Blue or blurry mark | Determination of excess moisture (water content) |
| Add a couple of drops of 5% lapis solution to the aqueous solution of honey. | No sediment | Sediment (white) | Detection of sugar syrup |
| Sniff the aroma | Fragrant, without foreign odors | No aroma, caramel smell | A caramel smell could mean it's heating up (melting) |
| To taste | Slightly tart, no solids or crystals, and should completely melt in your mouth. Pleasant aftertaste. | Taste of caramel, bitterness. Leaves a residue when absorbed. | |
| Stir a spoonful of honey into a clear glass of water. | No precipitation | An impurity on the surface of the water. Presence of precipitation. | Detection of sand, sawdust |
| Stir honey into a cup of tea | The tea will darken, become cloudy | A precipitate forms | |
| Add a couple of drops of iodine to the aqueous solution of honey | No reaction | Blue coloring | Detection of flour and starch |
| Add a couple of drops of tannin to the aqueous solution of honey | No reaction | Appearance of white flakes | Detection of flour and starch |
| Add a couple of drops of acid or vinegar to the aqueous solution of honey | No reaction | Foaming, hissing | Revealing chalk |
| Add wine alcohol to the aqueous solution of honey | Transparency remains virtually unchanged | A cloudy sticky mass is released | Identification of starch syrup |
| Dip stainless steel hot wire into honey | Clean wire | Wire with adhesive mass | Presence of foreign impurities |
| Weigh 1 liter of honey (liter jar) | Not less than 1.4 kg (net) | Less than 1.4kg (net) | Detection of honey diluted with water |
To make an aqueous solution, you need to pour honey into a glass in a ratio of 1:6 hot water or boiling water, then stir well and cool. It is better to use distilled water.
If you decide to choose honey not at the market, but in a regular store or supermarket, then you should know that in the vast majority of it it will be heated or with the addition of preservatives. It often happens that store-bought honey turns out to be completely unnatural or artificial. It is usually sold in sealed jars with a label, so sometimes it is useful to study what is written there (composition, date of manufacture, expiration date, etc.).
Store-bought honey can be called high-quality if it is heated in accordance with the temperature regime. In any case, do not expect from such honey the full beneficial properties inherent in natural honey.
It is not recommended to store honey in the refrigerator. Keep away from sunlight. Choose a cool, dry storage location. If you want it to be stored for a long time, buy it only when fully ripe.
The guaranteed shelf life of natural honey, subject to storage conditions, reaches 1 year.
The optimal storage temperature is 5-10 degrees Celsius, humidity is not higher than 65%. It is not recommended to store at a temperature of 11-19 degrees Celsius with high humidity: the fermentation process may begin.
It is not recommended to heat honey, but if you do this, you must follow temperature regime. It should be borne in mind that after heating the souring process accelerates. You can heat it, for example, in a jar dipped in warm water. Honey loses its properties at temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius.
If honey begins to ferment and sour, it must be used quickly or turned into a liquid state, which is an extreme case.
When packaging, use clean, dry containers. Do not put honey in one container different varieties and conditions (old with young, used with only opened, etc.).
The rate of honey crystallization mainly depends on the ratio of glucose (sugars) and fructose content. The more glucose, the less fructose and the faster it will begin to thicken. For example, acacia honey, containing about 35% glucose and 40% fructose, remains liquid throughout the year, while rapeseed honey (at least 51% glucose) crystallizes after a couple of days.
In addition, the rate of crystallization is influenced by: storage conditions (temperature, humidity, cleanliness, tightness, stirring), water content, and the presence of crystallization centers (crystal nuclei). All this must be taken into account when choosing honey.
Early honey (May) remains liquid for a long time because it contains less glucose, has high humidity and contains almost no crystallization centers.
06.01.2012 , 13 611 , 0
Only acacia honey can be liquid. Everything else must crystallize
It can be sold for years, digested several times
The beneficial and even healing properties of honey have been known for a long time. According to the region’s chief nutritionist Galina Polinko, honey contains not only the majority of microelements, including those necessary for normal operation magnesium and potassium, as well as iron and manganese are also important for the blood, but almost all vitamins are necessary for the body. Honey improves immunity and calms nervous system, and also contains glucose and fructose, which improve metabolism, serve as a source of energy and are indispensable for patients diabetes mellitus. List beneficial features honey can be consumed for a long time, but all of them concern only a high-quality and natural product.
Market-tested honey is of high quality.
At the Central Market of Cherkassy you can find any kind of honey – from flower to onion honey. From 30 to 120 UAH. for 1 kg. Monofloral honey is considered the best and most expensive, that is, honey collected from one type of flower. But such honey is very rare, so most of it is sold as prefabricated honey. All honey that is sold on the market, according to the head of laboratory No. 1 of the veterinary and sanitary examination of the Central Market in Cherkassy, Lyubov Ribasyuk, is of high quality and safe, since it is regularly checked by market laboratory workers.
The quality control of honey in our market is very strict,” says Natalia Gladun, a doctor by training, a specialist in the quality of honey at the laboratory No. 1 of the veterinary and sanitary examination of the Central Market in Cherkassy. – Firstly, I will never take honey for analysis if the seller does not have a passport for the apiary. This passport must contain the results of a sanitary inspection of the apiary, a list medicines, which were used to treat bees if they were sick. If everything is fine with the passport, we take the honey for analysis. I make the analysis very simple, but at the same time specific. We don't check whether the honey is diluted or overcooked, we do special analysis, which makes it possible to detect one enzyme in honey. This enzyme is found only in high-quality and natural honey. Therefore, if we have discovered it, the need for other specific checks simply disappears. Therefore, if a seller on the market has the conclusions of a veterinary and sanitary examination, you can safely buy such honey.
But, despite this, Cherkasy residents do not trust the quality of market honey too much, but try to ask beekeepers through their friends and buy honey from them.
I never buy honey at the market,” confesses Cherkasy resident Elena Garkava. – I myself cannot determine by eye whether honey is of high quality or not, diluted or melted. And if you ask the sellers, they have it all natural. Therefore, I asked a beekeeper in Bilozerka and bought 3 from him liter jar for 180 hryvnia. This man sells some honey, so I hope his honey is natural, and it tastes like nothing.
You can check whether honey contains some impurities at home.
It is indeed very difficult for the average consumer to determine by eye, taste or smell whether honey is natural or not. According to amateur beekeeper Alexey Sereda from Lisyanshchyna, natural honey is becoming less and less every year, so it’s very easy to come across a counterfeit product.
The most common way to fake honey is to dilute it with sugar syrup, starch and flour, says Alexey. – It’s very easy to check this. If you drop a few drops of iodine into honey and it turns blue, it means natural product diluted with starch. You can also dilute the honey with water and let it sit for a while. If it is natural, there will be a cloudy liquid in the glass; if it is diluted with flour, the latter will precipitate. As for sugar syrup, it is almost impossible to detect it in honey yourself. It is worth remembering that only acacia honey can be thin and viscous. Everything else should crystallize. Crystals can be small or large, it doesn’t matter. But if honey other than acacia honey is viscous, it means it is either diluted or overcooked. In the latter, in general, no useful components are stored. Also, you should not buy honey that has foam on it. This may mean that the honey was collected immature and it simply fermented or was diluted with something.
You can determine whether honey is diluted with sugar syrup or not by taste.
Acacia honey, for example, has a very delicate taste and is sweet,” says Natalia Gladun. - A
Honey, diluted with sugar syrup, is very sweet and sour. Natural honey cannot be sour. The only honey that has a sourish aroma is sunflower honey. Others should smell like the flowers from which they were collected. Buckwheat is like buckwheat, linden is like linden, although it sometimes smells like a pharmacy to me.
But it is better to beware of honey, which has a bitter taste. According to Alexey Sereda, beekeepers often treat bees with antibiotics, most often penicillin and bicilin. Antibiotics can also get into honey, but they can only be detected in laboratory conditions. Therefore, it is better to buy this product where it is tested.
First, the honey must be mature. After all, bees work on nectar for about a week: they evaporate the water, enrich it with enzymes, and break down complex sugars into simple ones. During this time, the honey is infused. The bees seal the finished product with wax caps - this is the kind of honey that has all the properties and can be stored for a long time.
Very often, beekeepers pump out honey during honey collection, without waiting for it to ripen, due to a lack of honeycombs. The water content in such honey is sometimes twice the norm, it is little enriched with enzymes and sucrose, and quickly sours.
To determine the maturity of honey, it is heated to 20 degrees, stirring with a spoon. Then the spoon is taken out and started to rotate. Ripe honey wraps around her. It may become sugary over time, this is normal. If you want to return it to its previous state, heat it slightly in a water bath. But sometimes this provokes further souring.
Using simple tests you can determine whether honey is adulterated. Flour and starch are determined by adding a drop of iodine to a small amount of honey diluted with water. If the solution turns blue, honey with flour or starch. If the solution hisses when adding vinegar essence, there is chalk in the honey. If a white precipitate forms in a 5-10% aqueous solution of honey when adding a small amount of lapis, sugar has been added.
How can you determine the quality of honey?
By color
Each type of honey has its own color, unique to it. Flower honey is light yellow, linden honey is amber, ash honey is transparent, like water, buckwheat honey has different shades of brown. Pure honey without impurities is usually transparent, no matter what color it is.
Honey, which contains additives (sugar, starch, other impurities), is cloudy, and if you look closely, you can find sediment in it.
By aroma
Real honey has a fragrant aroma. This smell is incomparable. Honey mixed with sugar has no aroma, and its taste is close to the taste of sweetened water.
By viscosity
Take honey for testing by lowering a thin stick into the container. If this is real honey, then it stretches after the stick as a long continuous thread, and when this thread is broken, it will completely descend, forming a tower, a pagoda on the surface of the honey, which will then slowly disperse.
Fake honey will behave like glue: it will flow abundantly and drip down from the stick, forming splashes.
By consistency
In real honey it is thin and delicate. Honey is easily rubbed between your fingers and absorbed into the skin, which cannot be said about fake honey. Fake honey has a rough structure, and when rubbed, lumps remain on your fingers.
Before buying honey in reserve at the market, take the product you like from 2-3 regular sellers. To start, 100 grams each. Do the recommended quality tests at home and only then buy it for future use from the same sellers.
Check if water and sugar have been added to honey
To do this, drop honey on a sheet of low-grade paper that absorbs moisture well. If it spreads across the paper, forming wet spots, or even seeps through it, it is fake honey.
Determine whether honey contains starch. To do this, put a little honey in a glass, pour boiling water, stir and cool. After this, add a few drops of iodine there. If the composition turns blue, it means that starch has been added to the honey. This is fake honey.
Find out if there are other impurities in honey. To do this, take a hot wire (made of stainless steel) and lower it into the honey. If a sticky foreign mass hangs on it, you have fake honey, but if the wire remains clean, the honey is natural or, in other words, full-fledged.
What should you pay attention to after purchasing honey?
Honey should not be stored in metal containers, since the acids contained in its composition can oxidize. This will lead to an increase in the content of heavy metals in it and a decrease in useful substances. Such honey can cause discomfort in the stomach and even lead to poisoning.
Honey is stored in glass, clay, porcelain, ceramic and wooden containers.
Honey contains 65-80% fructose and sucrose, it is rich in vitamin C, in addition, it contains almost all minerals. Therefore, when drinking honey with warm water or heating candied honey, do not bring the temperature to 60 degrees - this is the limit after which the structure of honey disintegrates, the color changes, the aroma disappears, and vitamin C, which can live in honey for many years, is destroyed by half or more.
How to distinguish a fake?
Add a little of what you bought under the guise of honey to a cup of weak, warm tea. If you were not deceived, the tea will darken, but no sediment will form at the bottom.
You can dilute a little honey in a small amount of distilled water and add 4 - 5 drops of iodine there. If the solution turns blue, it means starch was used to make this product. Clearly not bees. And by dropping a few drops of vinegar essence into the same solution instead of iodine, you will check the honey for chalk content. If it is there, the solution will hiss.
Over time, honey becomes cloudy and thickens - and this is a sure sign good quality. And not, as many people mistakenly believe, that the honey has gone bad.
If even after years your honey has not thickened, it means that it contains a large amount of fructose and, alas, does not have healing properties. Sometimes honey during storage is divided into two layers: it thickens only at the bottom, and remains liquid at the top. This indicates that it is unripe and should therefore be eaten as quickly as possible - unripe honey only lasts for a few months.
Careless beekeepers do not take bees out to collect nectar, but simply feed them sugar. Sugar honey is unnatural. There is nothing useful in it. This honey is unnaturally white.
Which honey is better - mountain honey or, let's say, lowland honey?
Don’t fall for the bait when they try to convince you that mountain honey is better than what bees collect in our open spaces. Mountain honey has no special advantages over plain honey. The quality of honey and the concentration of nutrients in it depend only on the decency and knowledge of the beekeeper, as well as on the environmental situation in the area where honey is collected. Here, however, there is a difference between honey collected in a clean environment and what bees collected from flower beds industrial enterprise. But here too everything depends on the beekeeper. His conscience should not allow him to make money from “industrial” honey.
Is it possible to buy honey by hand?
Only if you are sure what you are buying. The most common honey adulterator is sugar syrup. Unripe honey is often diluted with the same syrup to give it the missing sweetness.
Real honey contains no water. Honey with syrup has high humidity - this can be checked in the following way. Dip a piece of bread into honey, and after 8-10 minutes, take it out. High-quality honey will harden the bread. If, on the contrary, it has softened or completely spread out, then this is nothing more than sugar syrup.
But no one on the market will allow you to conduct such experiments, but they will let you try. Often honey is dripped onto a small piece of paper for tasting. This is quite enough to conduct another experiment. When going to the market to buy honey, take a chemical pencil with you. Smear the honey on a piece of paper with a pencil, you can smear it with your finger, and try to write something on the “honey” strip with a chemical pencil. If after a few seconds an inscription or blue streaks appear, you can confidently and loudly inform the seller (so that other customers can hear) that the product contains starch or flour. If you don't have a chemical pencil, a drop of iodine will do. The same blue tint of the proposed honey will unmistakably identify the starch and flour in the product.
Sometimes, to achieve the thickness of real honey, anything can be added to syrup or unripe honey. Flour, starch, starch or beet molasses and even chalk. To prove the presence of these substances in honey, it is enough to dissolve it in water (1:2). The solution of adulterated honey will be cloudy and shimmer, and a short time later a sediment will appear at the bottom of the glass. If you want to know for sure what was mixed into the honey, add a few drops of vinegar to the precipitate. Foaming of sediment (release carbon dioxide) directly indicates chalk in solution.
Sellers of useful products have several tricks.
First, close your ears and don't listen to what they tell you. For a bunch of liars, of course, one honest seller may fall for one, but how do you know that the one standing in front of you is honest? Try honey not only from the top, but also from the bottom of the jar. Feel free to put a spoon into the jar and don’t listen to the sellers who start shouting: “Don’t spoil the product!”
Honey is an antiseptic, and a clean spoon in a jar cannot spoil it. It’s another matter if it’s not honey at the bottom.
Do not buy unchecked or rolled honey from the market. It is a myth that honey is best stored with a tin lid.
Crystallization is a natural process of honey, which does not affect its quality and composition of nutrients. Don't be fooled by crystallized honey. Do not come the next day to the seller who promised you non-crystallized honey. They will bring the same thing, but warmed up. But you can’t heat honey. Those who prefer honey in liquid form should take this fact into account. Place the jar of honey in warm water. When the water cools down, change it. Gradually the honey will melt.
Real honey has the following characteristics:
- High-quality honey does not roll off the spoon too quickly. Take a tablespoon of honey and turn the spoon several times in a quick circular motion. The honey will roll over it, almost without draining into the jar.
- Dip a spoon into the container with honey. When pulling out the spoon, evaluate the nature of the swelling of the honey. A good one will form a ribbon, sit in a mound, and bubbles will form on its surface.
- All types of honey have a sweet taste, but some varieties have a specific taste. For example, tobacco, chestnut and willow varieties have a bitter taste, while heather is astringent. Any deviations in the taste of honey indicate its poor quality. Other flavor defects may be due to the presence of impurities. Excessive acidity may be associated with the onset of fermentation, the aroma of caramel is the result of heating, obvious bitterness is due to incorrect storage conditions of a low-quality product.
- The color of honey depends solely on the variety. And here there can be all shades of brown and yellow. Do not be alarmed by pale yellow, slightly cloudy honey - this is normal for acacia
Which honey to choose
- Lime: excellent honey, light yellow, easy to crystallize, has a characteristic odor. Used for illness respiratory tract, including in the form of inhalations. Has a beneficial effect on the gastrointestinal tract and kidneys. Bees can collect about 40 kilos of honey from one linden tree.
- Acacia: also one of the best. Transparent, light, more liquid, with a faint acacia aroma. Crystallizes slowly. Recommended for diseases of cardio-vascular system, gastrointestinal tract, women's inflammatory diseases, including its use topically, due to its bactericidal properties.
- Fruit honey: polyfloral, with berry and fruit crops. Light amber, with a delicate smell and taste. It has exceptional dietary qualities.
- Clover: colorless, almost transparent, and the weak aroma causes buyers to doubt its naturalness.
- Buckwheat: bright, almost brown color, with a characteristic odor and slight bitterness. Used in confectionery products. Field and meadow: polyfloral, with a pleasant smell and taste. It is light amber, brown in color. Has all medicinal properties.
- Dandelion: with a characteristic color and smell, slightly bitter, thick. Has wound healing and anti-inflammatory effects.
- Sunflower: golden yellow, pleasant to the taste, crystallizes quickly. By medicinal properties inferior to basic honeys.
Buckwheat treats diseases of the stomach, blood and skin, sweet clover - heart ailments, linden is good for colds and flu, clover increases potency.
At the same time, honey, like any medicine, must be stored and consumed strictly according to the rules.
There is a science behind taking honey. If you do it at the wrong time and incorrectly, then even the most best honey may cause rash, vomiting, or indigestion. If the acidity of the stomach is normal, you can take honey at any time, but not immediately after eating. If the acidity is low, honey should be eaten ten to fifteen minutes before meals. Wash down cold water. If the acidity is high - an hour or two after eating, and wash it down with warm water. Taking honey on an empty stomach is not recommended.
Honey mixed in tea is no longer a medicine, but just sugar.
Storage method
It is enough to store natural honey in glass or plastic containers, tightly closed with a regular plastic lid. In a dark and dry place (preferably a living room rather than a kitchen), honey can be stored in such containers for decades. Direct Sun rays are destructive for him (remember how in markets honey sits in the sun for weeks, if not years).
Beekeepers recommend buying several kilograms of honey at once if you have found a natural, high-quality product. You shouldn’t really believe that honey is most beneficial only for the first year. It has practically no shelf life and does not lose its medicinal and taste qualities.
Warmth is harmful to honey. At temperatures above +150, the life-giving balm becomes simply a mixture of carbohydrates. Honey is afraid of the sun. After forty-eight hours of continuous solar irradiation, the enzymes in it are destroyed. First of all, inhibin, an antimicrobial enzyme.
The environment for honey must be chosen carefully. It quickly absorbs the smells of fish, cheese, sauerkraut. Equally easily absorbs both flour and cement dust. The humidity in the refrigerator is too high for it. The best place for honey where it is dry, cool and does not smell of anything.
The container with honey (preferably a dark glass jar) must be hermetically sealed, otherwise it will turn sour. If you keep honey in a wooden barrel made of coniferous trees, it will absorb the smell of resin. In an oak barrel it gets dark. If it’s a barrel, then it’s linden, birch or aspen. Honey can be stored in food-grade plastic containers for no more than a week. All other polymers are strictly prohibited. From metal utensils, nickel-plated and enameled ones are suitable, but without any chips. But galvanized and copper are strictly prohibited. Honey combines with zinc and copper chemical reaction, filling with poisonous salts.
The shelf life of honey is one year. After this, it loses its antimicrobial properties. The amount of glucose and fructose decreases by ten to twenty percent. Vitamins B1, B2 and C begin to break down. The amount of sucrose and acids increases.
