What consistency and color should a natural product be, why is the honey liquid or too thick, and how to distinguish a real product from a fake? It is not so easy for a beginner, and for people who are not professionally engaged in beekeeping, to understand these issues. In addition, more and more often you can come across scammers who instead of this valuable product offer counterfeit products. Let's try to find out which honey is liquid and remains so for a long time. So let's get started.
A little bit about honey
Natural honey is a product with exceptional taste and nutritional qualities. This is a fairly high-calorie product (about 328 kcal), its composition is close to blood plasma. 200 g of honey is equivalent in nutritional value to 480 g of fish oil. Honey improves metabolism, enhances digestion, stimulates appetite, and increases hemoglobin. Helps with cardiovascular disease, as well as the liver and stomach. This product contains folic acid, which favorably affects the growth and development of children. It is even called the elixir of youth. Attention should be paid to the fact that 1.4 kilograms should be contained in one liter of ripe honey.
When to buy?
Honey is best bought in summer or autumn. It is during this period that the working bees begin their work, which will continue until the last fine days. At this time, get fresh liquid honey, so it is collected from honeycombs. After time, the moisture evaporates, and it begins to thicken.
What influences the choice?
Let us consider in more detail the quality of a natural product. This will help you make the right choice.
Consistency
It is she who is the first sign of a quality product. The mass must be uniform, no stratification and precipitation are allowed. The consistency of the product depends on the season, air temperature. In the summer, when it starts to be pumped, the honey is liquid, closer to winter the consistency becomes thicker. Usually with the onset of cold weather, the process of crystallization of honey begins , it becomes thicker, lighter and more cloudy. The exception is acacia honey, it crystallizes much later. Natural honey in winter cannot have a liquid consistency. If in winter the honey is of a liquid consistency, this indicates that it was warmed up on a stove or the bees were fed sugar.
Fluidity
The following method is used to check only young liquid honey: you need to scoop it with a spoon in a jar and lift it up, the natural one lasts a very long time and flows down in a continuous stream. If you put it on a plate, it goes downhill, and only then spreads over the surface. You can take a spoon with nectar and twist it around its axis, a quality product will be wound on it, and immature honey drains immediately. If you take a little honey and rub it between your fingers, the natural one will immediately absorb, and the fake one will turn into a lump.
Taste
The taste of real honey is not only sweet, it should also be slightly bitter, cause a slight sore throat and have a tart taste.
Scent
Natural honey has a pleasant unobtrusive smell of flowers. The fake product either doesn’t have any flavor at all, or it can be sharp and give away caramel.
Color
The color of the finished product directly depends on which honey plant the bees collected nectar from. Linden honey is amber, buckwheat is brown, and floral has a light shade. White color indicates that the bees were fed sugar.
How to make honey liquid?
It is not difficult to make honey liquid, for this you can melt the crystallized product. However, it should be remembered that when heated above 40 ° C all useful substances disappear from it, which is not so scary. When this product melts, a substance is formed - oxymethylfurfural, which is a real poison. You can heat honey in three ways:
- The most popular way is to heat honey in a water bath (in water up to 40 ° C).
- Leave honey in a room with a sufficiently high temperature (for example, in a bath).
- And last but not least, melting on the stove should be considered, do not forget about the content of the poison.
Why is honey honey?
The answer is quite simple - fresh, just pumped out honey contains about 22 percent of the water. After some time, the liquid evaporates, and the crystallization process begins. The consistency of the product may be different, it depends on the variety and storage temperature.
Which honey is better - thick or thin?
Honey lovers often wonder which honey is better and more beneficial - thick or thin? The answer is simple: crystallization does not degrade the quality of honey. If the mass is homogeneous with sugar crystals - this is considered the norm of such a product. The benefit of honey depends on which honey plants it is collected from.
Unripe honey
Sometimes the acquired honey of a liquid consistency exhibits a separation, a thick fraction settles at the bottom, and a liquid fraction rises up, and sugar crystals are absent. This means that the purchased product is immature, most likely the temperature regime was violated, as a result of which the honey has high humidity. Therefore, exposure to honey is very important. A poor-quality product may soon foam and ferment.
Varieties
Among natural varieties of honey, there are those that are sugared later than others. This must be considered when buying.
May
This honey is the earliest, they begin to pump it out in the first month of summer. For him, bees collect pollen from the very first honey plants: bird cherry, apple, cherry, lily of the valley. It is considered one of the most valuable varieties of natural honey. This variety contains a lot of fructose. It is known that fake May honey is often sold , since it is very similar to the product developed after feeding the bees with sugar syrup. It is better to buy such honey in the fall, when it stands well.
Acacia
White honey has a unique aroma and taste. It contains 40% fructose and 35% glucose, due to this and due to the moisture that it contains, the product does not crystallize within 1-2 years. Acacia honey is very liquid, as it has just been pumped out, and retains such a consistency for a long time.
Chestnut
Real chestnut honey of dark color and very viscous consistency. The process of its crystallization takes from six months to a year, but even in this form it has an excellent taste. Hardened honey crystals are similar to gelatin granules. With prolonged storage, its structure becomes coarser. This variety has the ability to exfoliate, but this does not mean that it is not real, but is considered its special quality.
Lime
This is another white honey, as well as acacia honey, stored in liquid form - from 1.5 to 3 months. Linden honey - a viscous consistency. During crystallization, it becomes like semolina with lumps.
Buckwheat
The variety is dark in color, while it is orange and brown. Contains a huge amount of minerals. Honey has a fairly tart taste with bitterness. When consumed, it can tickle a little in the throat. It crystallizes very quickly, so you need to store it correctly. It is recommended to use to enhance immunity.
How to store?
You must choose the right dishes for storing honey. For this purpose, you can use glass, ceramic, wooden, metal containers. In a room designed to store the product, the temperature can be from +6 to +20 degrees, but at room temperature the crystallization process will begin much earlier. If the refrigerator has a dry freeze function, honey can also be stored in it. This product has the ability to absorb odors, so it is recommended to store it separately. It should not be placed in a bright place, from the light in it antimicrobial properties are destroyed. During storage, liquid honey becomes cloudy, darkens, becomes thicker - this is a completely normal stage of its maturation.