How to check honey for naturalness at home: ways to determine quality

Honey is a unique product that contains many valuable ingredients. It helps fight disease and keep the body he althy. Today there are a large number of varieties of this product, each of which has healing properties. In this case, it is important to choose the right quality product. However, not everyone knows how to check honey for naturalness at home.

Criteria for quality honey

The natural product has a number of features. You must know them in order to choose a quality product.

Appearance

Before buying a particular variety of bee nectar, it is important to familiarize yourself with its characteristics. So, buckwheat product has a brown tint, linden - amber, and flower - golden yellow.

An unnaturally white product should be suspicious. This color indicates that the bees were fed with sugar syrup. Therefore, it is difficult to call this honey useful. In addition, it harms people with high blood sugar levels. According to the standards, natural honey should be light yellow, colorless, yellow or darker.

Consistency and viscosity

You can evaluate the naturalness of honey by the degree of viscosity. It can be liquid, medium or dense - it depends on the level of maturity of the product. In any case, when scooping fresh nectar with a spoon, it should spread in different directions.

Each variety has its own texture. Experts distinguish the following groups:

• very runny - this category includes clover and acacia products;
• liquid - these include buckwheat, rapeseed, linden honey;
• thick - this group includes dandelion and sainfoin;
• sticky - a honeydew variety is considered a representative of this variety;
• jelly-like - this group includes a heather product.

The slower the mass flows in the jar, the less water it contains. This indicates that the composition will not ferment. It is also important to control that there is no white foam on the surface, and light streaks in the structure.

It is worth considering that a natural product has a transparent consistency before crystallization. If crystallized honey is sold in the summer, you need to look for a viscous liquid substance, since in this case we are talking about last year's product.In a real bee product, crystals are formed already at a temperature of +30 degrees. This is not enough for a surrogate.

When buying, it is recommended to try to rub a drop of nectar between your fingers. In a fake, specific pellets will definitely appear. Such lumps indicate a high water content in the composition of the product.

Taste

When the mass is heavily diluted with water or pumped out prematurely, it begins to ferment and becomes sour in taste. In this case, foam often appears on top. A natural product without foreign impurities will be sweet or bitter, but still retain a pleasant taste. There should be no sour notes in it.

Fragrance

Natural high-quality nectar is characterized by a pronounced aroma. It can be weak or stronger, but it is always gentle and pleasant. It should not contain foreign matter.

Specific gravity

Honey has a high density. Therefore, 1 liter of the product does not weigh 1 kilogram. Normally, no more than 21% of the liquid is present in the mass. At the same time, the specific gravity of 1 liter of honey is 1.42-1.45 kilograms. In some species, this parameter reaches 1.6 kilograms.

Thus, 1 liter of honey must weigh at least 1.4 kilograms. If the mass is much lower, then the substance was diluted with water or it is not of natural origin.

Candied

Natural bee nectar candied gradually. This means that small crystals form in it. And their size is increasing all the time. If sugar syrup is used for falsification, the mass never thickens. In addition, crystals do not appear in its composition.

Assortment at the seller

Each bee can collect honey at a distance of 4-6 kilometers from the apiary.Specific plants are commonly found in this area. If a beekeeper offers customers more than 5-7 varieties of honey, then, most likely, some of them are not natural. The fact is that it is impossible to physically maintain many hives.

It is also important to consider the geographical origin of the product. Honey is produced only in certain areas. If the mass has a different origin, most likely it is falsified.

Methods for checking honey for naturalness

Today there are many methods for checking the naturalness of honey. This helps to ensure the quality of the product. One of the most common methods is the use of a chemical pencil. To use this method, a little bee nectar should be applied to the paper and an inscription should be made on top directly through the sweet product.

It will not be possible to make an inscription on high-quality nectar. If the honey is adulterated, a blue or purple trace will be visible after a few seconds. In this case, we can talk about adding water and sugar syrup to the composition.

Another device for checking the quality of honey is a lapis pencil, which can be bought at any pharmacy. First you need to make a honey solution with a concentration of 5-10%, and then lower the lapis pencil into it. If there is sugar in the composition, a white precipitate will appear.

This is not all possible options for checking the quality characteristics of the bee product. To identify additional impurities in the composition, it is worth using iodine, bread, ammonia or vinegar. At the same time, the simplest and most affordable option is the use of water.

Bread

To assess the presence of water in honey, you need to immerse a piece of bread in sweet nectar and leave it there for 10 minutes. In a natural quality product, the bread will harden, and in a fake one it will soften.

Water and ammonia

You can determine the naturalness of honey using water. This will require 1 tablespoon of bee product and half a glass of water. They need to be mixed and evaluated. The natural product must be completely dissolved. The only exception is the rapeseed variety. It is poorly soluble in water and remains heterogeneous.

Another effective test method is the use of ammonia. It helps to determine if there is starch syrup in the composition of the product. To get the result, you need to mix a little water and 1 tablespoon of honey in a container. Then you need to add a few drops of ammonia, close the jar with a lid and shake well. If the composition turns brown or dark brown, then it contains molasses.

Iodine and vinegar

The use of iodine to check the quality of bee nectar helps to quickly identify foreign impurities in the composition. It detects starch, flour and other unwanted additives.

To evaluate the naturalness of honey, you need to mix 1 tablespoon of bee products with a little water. Then add 2 drops of iodine to the composition and mix thoroughly. Then you can evaluate the response. A natural product will practically not change its shade, and a fake one will acquire a dark brown or purple color.

Vinegar can also be used to evaluate the quality of nectar. This tool will help detect chalk in the composition of the bee product. To do this, mix 1 tablespoon of honey with warm water, then drop a little table vinegar into the composition. When the solution hisses or foam appears on its surface, we can talk about a fake. Nothing will happen to a natural product.

Starch

In itself, this substance is not used to test the quality of honey. At the same time, unscrupulous beekeepers add starch to the beekeeping product. Today, there are many ways to detect this component.

The easiest way to detect starch is with iodine. If this component is present in the composition of the product, then the addition of the drug will cause a noticeable reaction, and the mass will turn blue.

Fire

To evaluate the quality characteristics of honey, you need to take a wire, heat it over an open fire and lower it into a sweet mass. If the product is natural, then the adhesive mass will not stick to the wire.

To assess the quality of honey, you can set it on fire. A high-quality natural product will not be bitter. Fake mass may turn dark brown or melt. It will also exude a sharp chemical aroma. The low quality is also evidenced by the appearance of a caramel smell.

Paper

To check the quality of honey, just put it on a piece of paper.A natural product with the required level of maturity will spread. If you wipe it off, there will be no trace left of the drop. When a wet spot appears, we can talk about the presence of water in honey. This means that the product is not mature enough and was pumped out prematurely by the beekeeper. You should not use such a mass.

Spoon

Natural honey should not be watery. It is important that the mass has a sufficiently viscous texture. Therefore, experts advise heating the substance to +20 degrees, stirring it. Then you need to pull out the spoon and start twisting.

Honey of normal texture will begin to wrap around the spoon. When the mass flows back into the dishes, you should pay attention to its consistency. Honey should lie down in a slide. It is important that bubbles form on the surface.

Only natural and high-quality honey brings he alth benefits. That is why it is so important to be able to determine its characteristics. To evaluate the properties of a bee product, you can resort to a number of available methods.

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