How to determine the quality of honey?

Types of honey

Before talking about the quality of honey, let's talk about its types - often the honey is mistakenly considered substandard because of the characteristics of a particular type of honey. So, by origin distinguish between flower and pad honey. Flower honey The bees are made from plant nectar, and the padewood is made from padi (a sweet liquid released by some plants and insects feeding on plant juice). Padewood honey has a darker color and a bitter taste,so it is sometimes considered substandard. In fact, padovy honey is no less useful than floral honey, the quality of honey does not suffer at all from the fact that it was produced from the padi.

The quality of honey can be determined according to its taste,smell and color, but it must be borne in mind that these indicators may vary depending on which plant the honey was made from. The color of honey, for example, can range from almost white in linden and acacia honey to brown in buckwheat honey. Each type of honey has its own characteristic aroma and flavor.

By consistency honey happens liquid and crystallized ("Who sat down"). Immediately after pumping out of honeycomb honey is liquid, but sooner or later it crystallizes ("sits down", candied). The more glucose in honey, the faster it is candied. Crystallization is a natural process, it does not at all degrade the quality of honey.

How to determine the quality of honey?

Unfair sellers can tryslip you unripe, melted (honey, which was heated after crystallization, to make it liquid again) or artificial (made from sucrose) honey. Such honey is not harmful to health, but there is no benefit from it either. How to determine the quality of honey and make sure that you do not slip a counterfeit?

In general, there are special standards,allowing to evaluate the quality of honey. But you in fact will not be in shop or in the market to consider honey under a microscope and to do its chemical analysis? When buying honey, you need to use techniques that allow to determine the quality of honey by eye (as well as taste and smell).

In immature honey, there is a lot of water and little sucrose and enzymes. Because of the high water content, such honey quickly turns sour. To determine the maturity of honey, it is heated to 20 ° C and tried to wind on a spoon. Mature honey is wound on it, and immature or falsified - drains.

In order to distinguish between natural liquid honey and fake honey, lower a thin stick into a container with honey. Fake honey will behave like glue: It will drain from the wand, drip abundantly down and form splashes. A real mature honey will reach for the wand with a long thread, then it will tear and fall completely to the surface, forming a "turret", which gradually disperse.

Quality honey never foam. If honey foams and has a sour smell, it is fermented. But natural honey does not wander, because has bactericidal properties. The fermented honey was either diluted, heated, or stored incorrectly, or it was simply fake.

The present honey crystallizes with time. Given that the last time honey is pumped outfrom honeycombs in early October, after October 20, natural honey can only be candied. Exceptions are only two - heather and acacia honey. If you are offered to buy liquid honey in winter, it means it was heated. This is at best, and at worst - you are offered a fake. Benefits from such honey are zero.

The quality of honey helps to determine the color, taste and smell. Each type of honey has its own taste and fragrance aroma (although sometimes light, subtle). Falsified honey usually does not smell. Still at the present honey the gentle homogeneous consistence, and at false - rough, with lumps.

Too dark or too light honey color should alert you. But do not forget that forSome honey species are characterized by a dark or light color. For example, dark buckwheat honey - not necessarily substandard, but good lime honey can not be dark.

If honey has a caramel flavor, itmelted. Burnt, sour or alcohol flavor is characteristic for fermented honey. Unspressing unleavened taste is a sign of falsified honey from sucrose. A bitter taste does not always mean a poor quality of honey: it can be padeviy, willow, chestnut or tobacco honey. But frank bitterness is an indicator of poor quality.

Note that you can not buy honey, which was stored in a metal container: honey reacts with metal, and harmful substances are formed. It is dangerous to buy honey collected in ecologically disadvantaged areas. If you are afraid that you can not correctly determine the quality of honey, buy 100-200 g of honey per sample, and if its quality suits you - safely buy more honey from this seller.