Only beekeepers themselves know how natural and environmentally friendly honey is from their apiaries, but any consumer can do a certain analysis. Before buying a large quantity of this valuable product, it is advisable to purchase a small jar from the same batch and conduct simple studies.
How to determine the quality of honey at home, so as not to run into a fake?
What honey is fake?
The history of fake honey began a long time ago, the first mention of its falsification dates back to 1855. Since then, the techniques of fraudsters have improved so much that sometimes it is possible to reliably determine its quality only in laboratories.
Which honey is falsified:
- immature;
- warmed up (melted);
- honey with additives and impurities.
Most often, sugar honey and artificially inverted sugar are mixed into a natural product, less often starch and beet molasses.
How to determine the quality of honey at home
First, check the maturity. Some beekeepers, out of ignorance or out of selfish motives, tend to start pumping out honey as early as possible in order to sell it with the greatest benefit.
Why is raw honey bad? More than 20% of moisture will be contained in it, it quickly loses its healing properties, is stored worse, often starts to ferment. In the process of fermentation, fusel oils are formed , and such a product becomes unusable.
How to determine the quality of honey? Maturity is determined in many ways. The first of these is a viscosity test.
At a temperature of 20 0 C, you need to take a spoon with honey, place it horizontally, and begin to rotate. Ripe honey does not have time to drain, but is screwed onto a spoon. If you lower the end of the cutlery down, honey drains from it very slowly, and leaves a tubercle on the surface. Unripe honey starts to drain during rotation, and the surface is quickly leveled. At a lower temperature, the viscosity becomes lower, at high it increases.
When testing, it is necessary to take into account the variety, since different types of honey have different viscosities:
- Very liquid honey (acacia, orange, clover).
- Liquid honey (mustard, linden).
- Jelly-like (heather).
- Thick (sunflower, rapeseed, buckwheat).
The second way is to check the ratio of volume and weight. The weight (net) of one liter of ripe honey should be at least 1.4 kg.
Third: bubbles. If honey has a sour smell, alcohol taste, or bubbles form slowly on the surface, the honey has fermented.
Fourth test: paper. A drop of honey is applied to a newspaper sheet. If the honey is ripe, it will remain on the surface. If wet, it spreads, leaving a wet mark.
The fifth method is suitable when honey is already candied. If it splits into two layers of different density, it contains a large percentage of water.
Remove impurities in clean water!
To increase the volume and give the product a dubious quality of the type of natural ripe honey, various additives can be added to it. How to determine the quality of honey? At home, it is quite possible to determine its purity.
1. The presence of impurities is detected simply: a small amount of honey is diluted in distilled water. A quality product will completely dissolve. If there are extraneous inclusions, they will either precipitate or settle at the bottom.
2. Chalk can be detected by adding acetic acid to an aqueous solution of honey. If the mixture begins to hiss and foam, chalk is present in the honey.
3. To increase viscosity, starch and flour may be added to the honey. In this case, there is nothing easier than to determine the quality of honey with iodine. Honey must be dissolved in water, and then drop iodine there. If the solution turns blue, then starch is added to the treat.
4. Gelatin is detected by adding a 5% tannin solution to a mixture of honey and water. If available, white flakes will appear.
5. Ammonia will show a stick in honey. A few drops of alcohol added to the falsified aqueous solution will color it brown.
The definition of ghee
Often, sellers try to sell crystallized old honey under the guise of a new crop.
How to determine the quality of honey at home, if it is candied and melted? Signs of a fake:
- Heated honey is transparent and uniform, while the natural product is slightly cloudy due to the presence of protein compounds.
- The product has a faint aroma, caramel aftertaste, and it tickles noticeably in the throat.
- When the temperature drops to +5 0 C, vitreous filaments form in it. Natural honey only behaves this way in severe frost.
Sugar honey
Such honey has a white color and a very weak aroma (it must be taken into account that some types of honey, say, sunflower, also almost do not smell).
On the palate there is no characteristic astringency and slight perspiration. If you smear a drop on paper and set it on fire, the smell of burnt sugar will appear. In hot milk, such "honey" is curled up.
In the end
When buying, you should trust the sensations. Honey should be sweet, slightly tart and aromatic. It makes me feel a little tickle in the throat, and it tastes very good. The aroma should be natural, floral. Crystallization is a normal process for a 3-4 month old product or older. Frozen honey in winter should be more credible than liquid and transparent.