Methods for determining the quality of honey at home. How to determine the quality of honey at home: ways

Only natural mature honey has priceless healing properties. Therefore, checking its quality is of great importance. Take note of simple methods on how to do it at home.

Features of checking honey

Counterfeit honey is sold not only in the market, it is present on the shelves of shops and supermarkets. It is possible to determine whether honey is of high quality or not by examining its three characteristic qualities: nutritional value, constancy of natural composition, and storage acceptability. The nutritional value of honey is affected by the amount of carbohydrates it contains and the maturity. Its taste and medicinal properties depend on the maturity of honey.

How to check honey for naturalness by external signs

Sometimes it is required to check the naturalness of honey when buying on the market or in a store without the use of additional substances. The fastest and simplest honey check is performed by external signs, without detailed analysis:

• Natural honey is easily rubbed between the fingers, absorbed by the skin of the hands.
• Examine the surface of the honey. It should not have foam in the form of bubbles. Fermentation, foaming - a sign of immaturity or the addition of water. Natural honey contains particles of pollen, wax, and other natural inclusions. Too pure, transparent honey - most likely artificial.
• Competent buyers do not seek to purchase liquid honey, because "candied" is more difficult to fake. Natural honey crystallizes over time, fake honey crystallizes very slowly or does not exist at all. At the end of autumn and winter there is no liquid natural honey, even late varieties crystallize. There are exceptions to the rule, some varieties of honey are always liquid: lime, May, buckwheat, fireweed, acacia. In the summer, crystallized honey is last year's or even older.
• The taste of natural honey is sweet, but in moderation, a little tart. In the mouth, it can cause a slight tingling, burning sensation. Artificial honey does not have such taste qualities. Honey acquires a light aftertaste of caramel when heated. "Heated" honey has a more presentable presentation, but is less useful. It loses its unique healing properties at a temperature of +50 degrees and even at +35-40 degrees it can become harmful, carcinogenic.
• Another sign of the naturalness of honey is the smell. The natural product has a characteristic, easily recognizable fragrant aroma, the fake has no smell.

It is very difficult to check honey for naturalness in market conditions. The considered methods cannot protect you from all possible falsifications. Choose honey for color, smell and texture.

How to find out the naturalness of honey by viscosity

A more detailed check of honey can be done at home, this will help to study the product for viscosity. Ripe, natural honey has a viscous consistency. It is important that when experimenting with honey, the ambient temperature is neither high nor low, approximately +20-21 degrees.

Features of checking the viscosity of honey:

1. Dip a tablespoon in the honey and swirl it quickly a few times. Natural, high-quality honey will wrap around the spoon without dripping from it.
2. Dip a teaspoon into the honey. After removing it, watch how the honey flows from it. The process should take place slowly, in large drops. Most of the honey will remain on the spoon. This happens because mature honey is very viscous, it contains about 21% water. Unripe - more liquid.
3. Dip a wooden stick in honey. Pick her up. Honey should flow in a continuous, viscous stream. Natural honey does not drip, does not splash, forms a hill on the surface, which gradually compares with the rest of the mass.

Mature, high-quality honey is very viscous, its humidity according to GOST is not higher than 18-20%. Early pumped honey is immature, it is poorly stored and can ferment.

Checking the quality of honey at home by heating and weighing

Even laboratory analyzes of honey do not provide complete information about its quality. The properties of each honey are unique. Its composition is influenced by many factors: the region of collection, the variety of honey plants, the breed of bees, the maturity of honey at the time of the study, the presence of pollen.

Instructions for testing honey by heating:

• Place a closed jar of honey (50 g) into a vessel of water. For 10 minutes, heat the honey in a water bath at a temperature of about + 45? C. Then open the lid and do an odor assessment. It must be tangible. Lack of smell is a sign of falsification.
• Warm the honey in a water bath for a longer time, about an hour. If the studied honey begins to exfoliate, then it is natural, otherwise it is a fake.

You can determine the quality of honey at home by weighing its density. Pour 1 liter of water into the vessel and mark its level with a marker. Pour out the water, dry the jar. To the mark made, fill the vessel with honey. Weigh the vessel with honey very accurately, up to a gram. Subtract the weight of the jar to get the exact weight of a liter of honey. Divide the weight of honey by the weight of water, i.e. per 1000. The accepted standard for the density of honey in Russia is 1.41 kg/l.

High-quality mature natural honey has a density in the range of 1.4-1.6 kg/l. If the density is below the permissible minimum - the honey is immature, of poor quality, above the upper limit of the range - an error in the calculations or when weighing.

Checking honey at home using non-traditional methods

Even high-quality honey, when purchased, may show signs of a fake. It is very difficult to distinguish natural honey from falsification. The best way not to make a mistake in honey sweetness is to take it from trusted beekeepers. There will always be friends who will advise this. But, if there are no reliable beekeepers, but you want honey, then use unusual methods for checking honey at home:

1. The authenticity of honey can be established by setting it on fire. Spread honey on a piece of paper and set it on fire. Watch the reaction. Natural honey will become a little liquid from the high temperature - and that's it, no more changes will happen to it. It will not burn or change color. The product will melt if the bees are fed sugar syrup instead of nectar. The brown color of the product indicates the presence of sugar in it.
2. Pour a spoonful of honey on a plate, add three times as much water and start shaking the plate vigorously in a horizontal direction. On the surface of a natural product, a pattern resembling a honeycomb is formed.
3. Put a piece of bread in honey, wait a while. After 10-15 minutes, check its condition. In a good clean product, the bread will harden, if the bread has softened, it means that sugar syrup has been added to the honey.
4. You can test honey with stainless steel wire. Heat the wire on fire and dip it in honey. Take it out and inspect. If the wire is clean, then everything is fine, if some particles stick to it, then this indicates the presence of impurities that make honey of poor quality.
5. The simplest method of testing honey for water is with fluffy paper. Take a napkin, blotting paper or piece of newspaper and drip honey on it. There should be no moisture around the drop, the paper should remain dry.
6. The most difficult thing is to independently determine the admixture of inverted sugar, which is used to create artificial honey. For the experiment, you will need drugs sold in a pharmacy - ether, resorcinol, concentrated hydrochloric acid. Rub some honey with ether. Filter the resulting solution, evaporate. Make a 1% solution of resorcinol in hydrochloric acid. Mix a few drops of the resulting solution into the mass remaining after evaporating the essential honey. Getting a color from orange to bright red indicates the presence of inverted sugar in honey.

Knowing the basic properties and characteristics of honey will most likely help you avoid buying low-quality or artificial honey. Checking honey at home can be done without the use of special preparations.

Determination of the naturalness of honey and the presence of impurities

It is possible to determine the naturalness of honey with 100% certainty only in the laboratory, but only a few people donate honey for research. "Home" methods for determining the naturalness of a honey product do not always give an absolutely unmistakable result, but sometimes they help to distinguish a good product from a fake.

Consider how to determine the presence of impurities in honey:

• Examine the solution of honey with water to the light: if the honey is of high quality, natural, then it will be cloudy or iridescent. Impurities will create a precipitate.
• Put honey on the palm of your hand and swipe it with an indelible pencil. If there are impurities or water, then the trace will be greenish or purple. In high quality honey, the chemical pencil will not leave a mark. The test is not 100% reliable. Excess moisture can be in natural young honey.
• During long-term storage, light crystals can form in honey, and a non-candied mass of brown color will remain in the center - this is a sure sign of the presence of impurities.

To make honey not only tasty, but also have medicinal properties, be sure to check its authenticity on a small volume, only after making sure of its quality, take honey for future use.

How to test honey for sugar

Mixing sugar syrup into honey, feeding bees with sugar are the most common ways to falsify a bee product. When determining the naturalness of "liquid gold", buyers want to receive accurate information about the absence of sugar in it, which is added by unscrupulous beekeepers:

1. Adding sugar to honey gives it the smell of sweet water, without the pleasant honey aroma. Such honey tastes sickly sweet, the color is suspiciously white.
2. During storage, liquid honey with the addition of sugar syrup becomes gelatinous, does not crystallize. "Sugar" honey has no astringency, it is perfectly transparent, without aroma.
3. Sucrose (cane sugar) is detected in a honey solution of lapis (silver nitrate). The honey solution for this experiment should be 5-10 percent. The precipitation of a white silvery precipitate is a sign of honey adulteration.
4. In a cup of weakly brewed black tea, put a spoonful of honey, stir until it is completely dissolved. If the tea becomes cloudy, it means that there is sugar in the honey. High-quality honey does not give sediment, the tea will only darken slightly.

Ways to test honey with additional substances

The most common methods for checking honey for naturalness are based on a solution of honey in water and some additional substances, such as iodine, vinegar, ammonia, milk. To create the initial solution, mix distilled water with honey in a ratio of 2 to 1.

Testing honey for flour with iodine

Unscrupulous beekeepers add flour or starch to honey to increase its mass or density. The admixture of starch, starch syrup, flour in honey is determined by adding iodine tincture to the initial solution. In natural honey there are no elements that react with iodine.

Checking the quality of honey with iodine is the most common and is performed as follows:

• 3-4 drops of iodine are enough for a solution of falsified honey to turn blue if starch or flour is present in it due to a chemical reaction.
• Increase the amount of iodine in the honey solution - and the intensity of the blue color will also increase. The more intense the color, the more starchy impurities in honey.
• Any change in the color of the honey solution when tested with iodine, with the exception of yellow, indicates the presence of non-bee additives. The natural product does not react to iodine, its color will not change.

Acetic acid for the determination of chalk chips in honey

The admixture of chalk chips increases the weight of the product, masking its poor condition. This honey is fake. The falsification of honey with the help of chalk chips is easily detected by using ordinary table vinegar or vinegar essence. Chalk reacts with acetic acid, it is accompanied by the release of carbon dioxide.

Add a little acetic acid to the initial solution, a couple of drops are enough. The presence of chalk in honey will cause foaming and fizzing. Sometimes chalk is added in small quantities, and the reaction will not be noticeable if the acid has not touched the chalk. In this case, it is better to use vinegar essence for express analysis.

Let the original solution settle, carefully drain the water, a layer of chalky sediment will remain at the bottom, which can be examined with acid.

Ammonia for detecting starch syrup

Starch syrup, added to honey, worsens its most valuable indicators. Honey "flavored" with molasses has a high viscosity, has a pronounced smell of molasses, and the content of reducing sugars is reduced in it. Residues in the adulterated sulfuric acid formed during the technological processing of molasses precipitate under the influence of certain reagents, such as ammonia.

Drop 5-10 drops of strong ammonia into the honey solution. A brown precipitate may form. The solution itself will also turn brown. This effect gives starch syrup. A solution of natural honey will not become cloudy when 96? alcohol. A solution with low-quality honey will turn whitish, as if milk is added.

Checking honey for sugar with milk

If the bees were fed with sugar, then it, like any non-natural honey product, does not have medicinal properties. It lacks the useful components of natural honey: vitamins, organic acids, aromatic substances, protein, mineral salts. You can determine "sugar" honey without complicated experiments, by using milk.

Add honey to hot cow's milk, if it curdles, then the honey was faked using burnt sugar. Real honey will dissolve in milk, gently sinking to the bottom of the dish.

The main component of unnatural honey is silicon, there are practically no other salts. In natural honey, the opposite is true.

How to determine the quality of honey - look at the video:

These "home" methods of verification are simple and affordable, but they do not give 100% confidence in the correctness of the results of the experiment to determine the quality of honey. You should not immediately buy a large jar of honey from an unfamiliar beekeeper, first take a small one, examine the honey for quality and authenticity.

And cosmetology. In order for its effect on the body to be positive, you should pay attention to its properties during the purchase.

How to check the quality of honey? The answer to this question is simple. The most accurate results will give a laboratory analysis. But checking its taste, color and other characteristics using special tools also gives good results.

Unscrupulous sellers sometimes try to hide the signs of a damaged product or make the product look more appetizing by mixing in various substances. To protect yourself from this, you need to know how to recognize natural honey and how you can check whether honey is natural or not.

Checking honey for quality and naturalness by eye

You can check honey not only at home, but also directly at the point of sale. When buying a product, you must know the signs of natural honey and not fall for counterfeit.

Taste

The first diagnosis of honey is carried out by checking for naturalness by sampling and evaluating its taste. The taste should be pleasant burnlearning aftertaste in the throat. If the taste has a hint of caramel, then most likely the product succumbed to thermal heating. The sugary sweetness indicates the addition of sugar.

Color

The color of the creation of bees depends on the plants from which it was collected. Summer flower varieties are light yellow, amber, brown. Regardless of the color, a quality fresh product has transparent structure and does not contain precipitation.

Smell (aroma)

Natural has a pleasant smell and fragrant aroma, which is incomparable to anything. Fake smell has no. The aroma depends on the plant from which it is collected. Even an inexperienced consumer can distinguish between buckwheat and linden honey by its taste and aroma. When buying, you should pay attention to the fact that the aroma does not contain the smell of smoke, caramel and fermentation.

Density and viscosity

Viscosity is an important criterion in determining its maturity. A mature product contains 18% water, while an unripe product contains 21% or more. If honey contains 25% water, then its viscosity will be six times less than that of mature honey, so it is not difficult to determine this parameter visually. Observations should be carried out at a temperature not lower than 20 degrees.

To do this, a tablespoon of fresh bee dessert is turned over in quick circular motions. If it wraps up on a spoon, then it is mature, if it drains, it is not. Mature product forms long strands when draining from a spoon and lies on the surface in the form of a small hill.

However, the viscosity also depends on plants. from which it was collected. This must be taken into account. Clover nectar is also very liquid. Linden, buckwheat and fireweed are also considered liquid.

Consistency

The consistency of a quality bee product is uniform and tender. Its drop is easily rubbed between the fingers and absorbed into the skin. A counterfeit cannot boast of such an ability. It usually remains on the fingers in the form of lumps.

Important! Crystallization of various honeys is a natural process, and its speed depends on the type of product and the temperature of the content. The ratio of fructose and glucose in the product is one of the parameters of the intensity of crystallization. A high fructose content indicates slow crystallization.

Checking honey for naturalness using improvised means

Consider ways to test honey using improvised means.

Yoda

Checking honey with iodine is carried out for the presence of impurities of flour and starch. To do this, prepare its solution with water in a ratio of 1: 2 and add a few drops of iodine. If the solution changes color to blue, then impurities exist, if the color does not change, there are no impurities.

vinegar

With the help of vinegar essence, you can determine the presence of chalk impurities. To do this, dissolve it in water (1: 2) and, if there is a precipitate, add a few drops of vinegar essence. If, as a result of a chemical reaction, the solution began to foam, then this indicates the release of carbon dioxide, therefore, an admixture of chalk exists. In the absence of vinegar essence, you can use simple vinegar, but its dose must be increased to 20-25 drops.

ammonia

With the help you can determine the impurity in the product of starch syrup. To do this, mix it with water in a ratio of 1: 2 and add a few drops of ammonia. After mixing, according to the results of the experiment, we can conclude that there are additives. The brown color of the solution with a precipitate indicates the presence of molasses.

Milk

With the help of fresh, you can determine the falsification with an admixture of sugar. If you dissolve a teaspoon of bee product in hot milk and it curdles, then this sign indicates the addition of sugar to the product.

Important! A more accurate test of honey for sugar is carried out using silver nitrate (lapis). You can find it in a pharmacy. In a 10% aqueous solution of the product of bees, add drops of lapis. If we observe turbidity around the drops and a white precipitate, the solution contains sugar.

Water

Testing honey with water is the simplest and most basic. It determines the presence of impurities in the product. To do this, pour water into a transparent glass beaker and add 1 tsp. honey. The solution is stirred until homogeneous. A quality product should dissolve completely. The solution should be cloudy, but without sediment. If sediment falls to the bottom, this indicates the presence of impurities.

a piece of bread

sheet of paper

To determine the maturity of the product, a sheet of paper or ordinary toilet paper is often used. To do this, a large drop of honey is dripped onto it and after 20 minutes the result is evaluated. If a wet mark up to 1 mm thick forms around a drop on paper, then the honey is mature, if the mark is much thicker, then such a product is better. do not buy.

stainless steel

Hot stainless steel wire is used to determine impurities. If, after immersion in the product, its surface remains clean, then this indicates its good quality. In the case of sticking of different particles, the honey product has impurities.

Important! Honey should not be heated above 50 degrees, otherwise it will lose all its beneficial properties.

chemical pencil

Before you test honey with an indelible pencil, you need to know that its action is based on a change in color when it comes into contact with moisture. It is necessary to dip the pencil into the bee dessert and draw conclusions from the result of the reaction. If the pencil has not changed color, there is no admixture of sugar syrup, and the honey is mature.

Other ways to check the quality of honey

There are many ways to determine which honey is natural and which is not, but there is no 100% certainty that the results are correct. Let's take a look at the ones that seem the most revealing.

heating

How to distinguish natural honey from fake using heating? We put a small jar with a tablespoon of bee products in a water bath and heat it for 8-10 minutes at a temperature not exceeding 45 degrees. Open the lid and appreciate the smell and aroma.

Lack of smell is the first sign of a poor-quality product. If heating in a water bath is carried out for about an hour, then natural honey should exfoliate, and the fake will remain homogeneous.

weighing

An easy way to determine the density of honey and therefore its water content. It should be noted that the less water, the higher the density. A glass jar with a capacity of 1 liter is weighed on a scale. Pour 1 kg of water into it and mark the level of the lower meniscus on the glass.

Later, the water is poured out and the jar is dried. Next, pour the purchased product into the jar to the mark and weigh it. The mass of a substance is determined by the difference between a dry and filled jar, which is equal to its density. According to the table set it water content.

Honey is a healing product that honey bees give us. Surprisingly, its composition has not yet been fully studied. There are about a hundred types of this delicacy, but in our area three types are traditional: buckwheat, linden and acacia. All of them differ in their color and taste. Honey is famous for its anti-inflammatory, bactericidal, antibacterial properties. The natural product has an amazing and unique taste and color.

In order to fully enjoy all the taste and healing qualities of golden honey, you need to be able to distinguish real honey from a fake. Not only sugar is added to the counterfeit, but also starch, flour and even chalk. If honey crystallizes, this does not mean that you bought a fake. On the contrary, a natural product will be candied in 1-2 months. This is due to the fact that natural honey contains a lot of pollen. If it does not crystallize, most likely it was subjected to heat treatment, as a result of which all the useful properties of the product were lost.

Crystallization lends itself to all varieties without exception, beekeepers in this case use the concept of "set honey". The properties of the product after sugaring are preserved. It is difficult to fake it, so do not buy a liquid product in winter, because you can buy honey that has been melted in a steam bath. And in summer, candied honey may not be the first freshness.

It is best to buy honey directly from beekeepers. But if you do not have such an opportunity, and you buy it on the market, make sure that direct sunlight does not fall on the product, which destroys all vitamins and enzymes. Be sure to ask where the honey was stored. It cannot be stored in aluminum, copper dishes, since the acids that make up honey react with the metal, which then accumulates in the body and can cause various diseases. It is ideal if you buy honey in glass, earthenware, wooden or plastic containers.

If you doubt the quality of the purchased honey, do some simple experiments at home:

1. Add a couple of drops of iodine to a cup of honey. If the product turned blue, starch was added to it so that it would not sugar.
   
2. Add a few drops of vinegar. If the honey sizzles, chalk is added to it to increase the viscosity.
   
3. Dip a spoon into the honey and slowly lift it up. Real mature honey will stretch like a thread and, descending, will create a hill, and the thread, breaking off, will stretch up. If the product is not yet ripe, it will instantly spread and form a funnel.
   
4. Rub a drop of honey between your fingers. If it is natural, it will instantly be absorbed into the skin.
   
5. Dip a slice of fresh bread into the honey. If the bread gets wet, you have a fake or spoiled product.
   
6. Put some honey on blotting paper. If after 3-5 minutes you see a watery spot on the back of the paper, you bought a fake.
   
7. Put some honey on paper and set it on fire. If the honey began to melt, the bees were fed with sugar syrup, and if it changed its color to brown, sugar was added to it. Real honey will not burn or change color.
   

Keep in mind that natural mature honey will not just taste sweet, it should be a little tart and bitter. Do not buy honey from apiaries that are close to highways, as well as in areas with an unfavorable environmental situation.

It is best to buy honey in season, it usually begins to be harvested in mid-August. Try to purchase this healing product from a trusted beekeeper you know with a year's supply in advance.

Honey is a real treasure for the body. It contains useful minerals and vitamins that have a positive effect on health. In addition, it is also a very tasty delicacy. The scope of application is very diverse. It can be used for the preparation of cosmetics, as an additive in food, or for the treatment and prevention of various diseases. Every person needs to know how to determine the naturalness and quality of honey in order to avoid buying an artificial product substitute.

Honey: what is it like?

There are several main types of honey:

• May. This is the name of the product obtained after the first roll. It should be noted that the name has nothing to do with the characteristics of the honey itself, but is purely philistine in nature.
• Honeydew honey. This is a product that is produced by bees from the sweet secretions of certain insects, and not from flowers. Honeydew honey of plant origin can also be obtained from the honeydew of trees such as maple, linden, spruce, fir, hazel.
• Monofloral honey. This product got such a name for the reason that bees collect it from the flowers of one type of plant.
• Polyfloral honey. A product that bees produce from nectar collected from several plant species.

We figured out the types of product, it remains only to understand how to determine the quality of honey at home.

How to choose natural honey on the market?

Today, on the market, it is very often possible to encounter the fact that sellers are trying to sell a non-natural product to the consumer. Such honey may have been pumped out earlier than expected, diluted with water or starch. Sometimes sellers even melt it specifically to make the product look more presentable. All these actions lead to the fact that honey loses its beneficial properties. And its heating leads to the formation of harmful substances in the composition. How to check honey? Real or not in front of you a product? This is a topical issue today. Knowing just a few simple rules, you can easily distinguish an artificial product from a natural one.

What you need to know:

• To avoid purchasing melted honey, never look for a liquid consistency in late autumn or winter. Even the latest varieties crystallize by this period. If you went to the market in January and see the seller demonstrate that honey flows smoothly from a spoon, never buy such a product, because it is most likely melted. Unfortunately, sellers do this very often in order to make more profit.
• Have you noticed that honey is sometimes sold with foam on the surface? This does not mean that it is fresh. Such a product was either pumped out ahead of time, or simply diluted with water, and this already significantly reduces the percentage of useful substances in the composition.
• When purchasing honey in combs, you also need to be very careful. The main thing is to pay attention to the fact that the cells are tightly sealed. Beekeepers do this in order to preserve the beneficial properties of the product.

How to determine the quality of honey by external signs?

Before you determine the quality of honey at home, you first need to buy it. At the market, it is not always possible to figure out whether a natural product is in front of you or not. But there are a few signs, paying attention to which, you can buy good honey.

What to pay attention to?

• Color. The first thing a person is interested in looking at the counter is the color of honey. Of course, depending on the varieties, shades may vary. However, there is a general rule. If the honey is fresh, then there will be no sediment in it. If the product is cloudy, this means that there are some impurities in the composition. If you notice a few dark spots, then the honey has been heated, perhaps even more than once.
• The consistency of natural honey should be slightly viscous. If you twisted the jar in your hands and noticed that the product pours too quickly, then this means that it is either diluted or melted.
• weight and taste. It is known that a jar with one liter of honey weighs about 1.5 kilograms. If you notice that it is much lighter, then the product has been diluted with water. Now as for the taste. Honey itself is sweet, but some sellers add extra sugar to it. Try the product on the tip of your tongue. If it is cloying, then the seller sweetened it.

Checking honey at home by dissolving the product in water

If you are interested in how to determine the quality of honey at home, then one of the most effective ways is to dissolve it in water.

Take a small cup of boiling water, add some honey there. After it dissolves, the liquid will become slightly cloudy. It is important to know that this should not leave a residue. If it appears, it means that there are impurities in the product. If after adding honey the water remains clear, it means that sugar syrup was added to it.

A sheet of paper is an easy way to check the quality of honey

In order to conduct this test, it is better to take low-grade paper, and not thick white paper. Even a thin napkin or plain toilet paper will do. Drop a small amount of honey on it and carefully observe how it behaves. If the honey begins to spread or seep through the tissue, then the product is unnatural or diluted. A good product will be one after which there will be no wet spots around a drop of wet spots on the napkin.

This method is great for determining the quality of honey at home. The test is carried out very quickly and gives you a clear answer whether the product in front of you is natural or not.

Home quality test using vinegar

Vinegar is in the arsenal of every housewife. Are you wondering how to determine the quality of honey at home using it? In fact, everything is very simple. Take some honey and dilute it with water, then add vinegar to it. Now let's see what happens next. If the consistency began to bubble or foam formed, then this is a very bad sign, which makes it clear that there is chalk in the composition.

iodine test

Now we check the quality of honey at home with the help of iodine. This test will help to find out if there are additional impurities in the composition of the product, namely flour or starch.

Take a small amount of honey and dilute it in water. Water should not be hot, let it be boiled at room temperature. Mix everything well so that the honey dissolves. Then add a few drops of iodine. If the solution turns blue, it means that the product contains flour or starch.

Wire method

You don't know how to test honey? Whether the product is real or not in front of you, ordinary copper wire will help determine. This test involves two simple steps:

• We heat the wire until it turns red.
• We lower it into a container with honey and hold it there for literally 10-15 seconds.

After you take out the wire, see if it remains clean. If so, then you have a truly natural product. However, if a sticky mass remains on the surface, then there are impurities in the honey or it has been diluted with water.

bread dough

Checking the quality of honey at home does not take much time, but you can be completely sure which product you use: natural or not.

One of the most effective tests is the bread quality check. Pour enough honey into the bowl to cover a piece of white bread, then lower the bread itself. Leave it there for about 10 minutes. If you see that the bread has softened or begun to spread, it means that there is sugar syrup in honey, and this already indicates that the product is not natural. Real, pure honey helps harden the bread.

Now you know how to test honey at home. All possible ways that give a clear result have been presented above. Never buy a large jar on the market at once, take a little to sample first. Carry out simple tests at home, and you will see what you have purchased: a fake or a natural product. If it turns out that honey is good, then you can already buy more, but you will be sure of its authenticity.

How to determine the quality of honey at home, absolutely everyone should know. Do not be fooled, always check the product for quality and the presence of impurities. And the methods listed above will help you make the right choice.

Greetings to everyone in my electronic beekeeper diary!

Yesterday a friend called me and asked me to consult about honey. He was going to visit relatives in Kazakhstan and wanted to bring local honey to his grandmother.

Walking through the shelves, I bought a couple of jars for testing from different manufacturers, as a result, one honey turned out to be sour, the other began to hurt my stomach.

I explained to him for a long time how to choose a good product, and then I thought that it would be better to write down all these recommendations so that I could take a printout with me. Look for helpful tips below.

A few tricks when choosing honey

• Liquid honey happens only within a month after the honey collection, which lasts from the end of July to the end of September. By the end of October, all collected honey begins to crystallize and thicken, except for honey from acacia and heather. Therefore, if you are offered liquid honey on the market in winter, most likely it has been melted or diluted with glucose syrup. Remember that when honey is heated to 40 degrees and above, it loses all its valuable properties and turns into ordinary sweet syrup.
• To check the naturalness of liquid honey, dip a spoon into it and lift it up - high-quality honey will slowly flow down a long thread, and if it breaks, then a slide will form on the surface of the honey, which will slowly spread. Fake honey quickly pours from a spoon or scatters with splashes. You can wind honey on a spoon - if it lays down in even folds, it means that this is not a fake in front of you.
• Be sure to smell the honey and taste it - it should have a fragrant smell and a characteristic taste that cannot be compared with anything else. The absence of aroma indicates the artificial origin of honey, and the caramel flavor indicates that the honey was exposed to high temperatures.
• The color of honey is not an indicator of its quality, so white honey does not mean sugary, and dark brown color does not indicate the presence of molasses or sugar syrup in honey. Sweet clover, acacia and fireweed honey have light shades, buckwheat, cherry and honeydew honey are dark brown, and other varieties can be light yellow, amber and dark amber.

There are ways to more detailed check the quality of honey at home. Some housewives dissolve honey in water and drip lugol or iodine - a blue solution indicates that starch or flour has been added to the product. More inquisitive experts arrange a real chemical laboratory in the kitchen, but this can be avoided if you take honey from a familiar trusted beekeeper who keeps bees in an ecologically clean area.

Source: www.edimdoma.ru

How to choose natural honey in the market

And the problem of how to choose real honey on the market is faced by many, especially city dwellers, is acute. It's no joke - both shops and markets are filled with fakes of the most varying severity, and in some places the sellers are so convincing and professional in their fakes that it is almost impossible to get away from them without buying.

So, instead of a truly natural product, some business beekeepers sell one that is made by bees, but not from nectar or honeydew, but from simple sugar syrup, with which the beekeepers themselves diligently feed their pets. Often sold honey is two or three years old, melted and poured many times. No one, of course, admits to its antiquity.

And the most severe fakes are vegetable syrups, with the help of additives disguised as a natural product. Such surrogates are most often prepared by evaporating melon or watermelon juices. Passing them off as natural honey is the most difficult thing, but sometimes scammers do it. In order not to be deceived and choose real high-quality honey, you should know the main features of a natural product.

How to distinguish good honey from fakes

1. Taste.

   It should be somewhat astringent and cloying. How to choose natural honey to taste? It has a pronounced specificity. Linden is somewhat more tender, sunflower or buckwheat - especially bright and clear. Fake or honey collected from sugar syrup tastes like banal sugar syrup. As a rule, they do not cause a slight burning sensation on the tongue, characteristic of a natural product.

2. By smell.

   Likewise with smell. How to choose high-quality honey on the market? Smell it! Any natural product has a specific aroma, even when thickened. And sugar syrups almost do not smell.

3. General consistency.

   It is easiest to identify by rubbing a drop of sweet treat between your fingers. How to choose natural honey? It will spread easily and be absorbed into the skin. Fake most often forms clots and lumps that are easily felt by the fingers.

   Very often, when choosing honey on the market or from hands, it is possible to evaluate its consistency by dipping a stick or spoon into it. The “correct” honey, when poured from a spoon, will form a thin thread, and on the surface of the main mass it will accumulate in the form of a pagoda, which will gradually spread. A fake, as a rule, drips from a spoon and immediately falls into the main volume.

4. By color.
   How to choose honey by color? This sign is the most difficult. So, some varieties of honey can be very easily confused with "sugar" because of their lightness. However, honey made from sugar usually gives the impression of being too white. In addition, natural honey is always quite homogeneous and transparent, while fakes usually have turbidity and a small sediment at the bottom.

But even knowing how to choose natural honey according to these characteristics, it is better not to rush and take the selected samples in the smallest quantities - a mayonnaise jar, for example. And already at home to conjure them. For example, there are good methods for assessing the presence of certain additives in the composition of honey.

What is added to honey

• Starch.
  It is calculated by the usual school experience: a few drops of iodine are dripped into a jar. In the presence of starch, the smudge on the surface of the honey will turn blue.
• Sugar.
  It is even easier to check: a piece of bread is dipped into honey and held for ten minutes. After that it is taken out. If the bread has hardened, then the honey is good. If it's soft, it means there's a lot of sugar syrup in it.
• Water.
  Water will definitely show itself if you drop honey on a piece of paper. A good product will remain a drop on paper, and diluted with water will begin to form liquid spots or even leak.
• Chalk.
  It is added to the composition of the product most often to give the impression of density and density. To detect it, it is necessary to drop vinegar essence into a spoon with honey. Hissing means bad.

In order to check whether the honey you have chosen is of high quality, you can simply poke it with a red-hot wire. If anything remains on it after taking it out, you have a fake in front of you. Good honey does not stick to hot metal. And only after these manipulations at home help you choose real high-quality honey, you can safely go to the market and buy from an honest seller a full supply for the winter.

By the way, it is important to remember that no natural honey can be stored for several years without thickening. Fortunately, after a few months it begins to crystallize. And if in the middle of winter they sell you a product that is clean, like a baby’s tear, and fluid like a mountain stream, know that something is wrong with it.

Source: sostavproduktov.ru

Distinctive properties and features of natural honey

Consistency is the first sign of real honey. First of all, it should be homogeneous, at the bottom of the jar of honey there should be no sediment, no delaminations. Also, depending on the time of year, ambient temperature, this indicator is different: young honey has a liquid consistency, and by winter it becomes thicker.

With the onset of cold weather, natural honey, as a rule, crystallizes (“candied”) - it becomes lighter, cloudy and thicker. If this does not happen, then the honey is falsified.

Attention!

An exception to the rule is acacia honey, this type of honey crystallizes more slowly than others.

That is why in winter real honey cannot be liquid, in this case it was either melted (usually beekeepers say “dissolved”) to give it a marketable appearance, or it was obtained as a result of feeding bees with sugar. By the way, in winter, packaged honey on store shelves is usually of a liquid consistency, which should be alarming.

• Pay attention to the fluidity of honey (this method is suitable for freshly pumped liquid honey). The quality of young honey can be determined as follows: dip a spoon into a bottle of honey, scoop it up and lift it up. Real honey lasts for a long, long time, flows down in an even stream, does not break into drops, lies on a plate in a slide, and then spreads smoothly over its surface. The last drop of dripping honey springs and pulls back to the spoon.

  If you turn the spoon around its axis, then the honey should “wrap” around it like a ribbon. Unripe honey will usually drip off immediately, no matter how fast you spin the spoon.

  Try also rubbing a little honey between your fingers. The real one is completely absorbed, while the fake one forms a lump that can be rolled.

• Taste. Real honey, in addition to being just sweet, should also be pleasantly bitter, cause a slight sore throat, it should have a tart taste. Hold some honey in your mouth and swallow - the right honey will "twitch" your throat.
• Smell and aroma. Real honey smells like flowers, the smell is unobtrusive, natural. Artificial has two extremes: the smell can be completely absent or it can be sharp, unnatural, give off caramel.
• The color of honey depends on the honey plants from which the nectar was collected. For example, flower honey comes in light shades, buckwheat - brown, linden - amber. The white color may indicate that the bees were fed sugar syrup. In this case, they ferment sugar and process it like ordinary nectar from the fields. The result is ordinary honey, which is difficult to determine even in the laboratory.

Of course, in terms of its useful properties and taste, it is significantly inferior to natural.

Often unscrupulous sellers already in spring or early summer offer buyers liquid dark-colored honey (supposedly buckwheat). This color can be obtained by melting last year's frozen honey. Such honey is “dead”, because when heated above 40 degrees, it loses all its useful properties.

For the same reason, honey should not be added to hot drinks (tea, milk, cocoa). For cosmetic purposes (during the preparation of homemade masks, scrubs), it is advisable to slightly heat crystallized honey in a water bath at a water temperature of about 40 degrees.

The so-called May honey is very popular among the population. For experienced beekeepers, the word "May" causes an involuntary smile. No, honey could theoretically be harvested in May, but no beekeeper in their right mind would forage sweet flower nectar and pollen from future brood, which they need for growth and development. Pumping out honey in early spring leads to lethargy, weakness of future working bees and a shortage of many tens of kg of honey in the fall during the main collection of bee products.

How to experimentally establish the authenticity of honey at home?

The high demand for honey and other bee products creates fertile ground for scammers. Currently, flour, chalk, sawdust, starch, sucrose, molasses and other fillers are used to create counterfeit.

Some types of fakes are difficult to detect even in the laboratory. For example, feeding bees that bring nectar from the fields with sugar syrup. The color of such honey is usually lighter, almost white, and it also crystallizes more slowly.

Methods for determining the fake honey using chemical reactions:

• Dissolve a little honey in a glass of water, then pour the liquid into a transparent container. If the product contains impurities (flour, chalk, starch, sawdust), they will either float to the surface or settle to the bottom.
• To detect starch or flour, add a drop of iodine to the honey solution, and the solution should turn blue.
• Drop vinegar into the solution. If something hissed - this is a sure sign of the presence of chalk in it.
• But using this method, you can detect the presence of sugar or starch syrup in honey. Prepare a 10% honey solution. Add a little medical alcohol to 1/2 of the solution, if it turns white, starch syrup was mixed into the honey. To detect signs of sugar molasses, you need to add silver nitrate or lapis to the remaining half. If a white precipitate falls out, it means that it is present there.
• The presence of impurities can also be determined using blotting paper (blotter paper). We apply a small amount of honey on paper, leave for 3-5 minutes. If during this time the paper does not get wet on the reverse side, then this indicates a high quality of honey.
• You can find out if honey is diluted with sugar syrup by immersing a piece of bread in honey for 10 minutes. We look: if the piece is hard, then the honey is normal, and if it has spread or softened a lot, then syrup was probably mixed into it.

Watch a video on how to choose the right honey:

Source: www.maski-natural.ru

Methods for determining the quality of honey

The people have their own methods of how to determine the quality of honey, for example, using a chemical pencil.

The bottom line is this: a layer of honey is applied to paper, a finger or a spoon and a chemical pencil is drawn over it, or a pencil is dipped into the honey itself.

It is assumed that if the honey is falsified, i.e. contains all sorts of impurities (sugar, sugar honey, as well as an increased amount of water), then a colored pencil mark will remain. However, the researcher V. G. Chudakov in 1972 tested 36 samples of honey of different quality, including 13 falsified ones, and believes that this folk method for determining the naturalness of honey and assessing its quality is absolutely wrong.

There is another folk method to determine the falsification of honey, it consists in a test on blotting paper. A small amount of honey is placed on blotting paper. If after a few minutes a watery spot appears on the back of the paper, this is considered a sign of falsification.

Again, V. G. Chudakov conducted laboratory studies of this sample, which led to the conclusion that the sample actually allows you to determine almost 100% of counterfeit honey, but besides, some natural honeys also fall into the category of counterfeit.

Advice!

If you buy honey, then look in the reference books for how it should look. The main thing is that it must have a certain aroma, honey taste, that is, a bouquet corresponding to a certain variety of natural honey must also match the color.

If the honey is too white, this should raise the suspicion that it is sugar? If the color is dark brown, is it not honeydew? If its aroma is blunted, the taste of caramel is felt - it means that it is melted honey.

Also pay attention to the consistency of honey - it should correspond to the density of the variety, at a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius it should be wound on a spoon, like a ribbon, with sweet threads that break at a certain moment.

Liquid honey should arouse suspicion. Most likely, this is unripe honey. It will not be stored, it will ferment, as it contains a lot of water. Such honey will not “wrap” on a spoon, but will simply drain from it. If you buy honey in the winter, it should not be liquid, and if it is, then it has most likely been warmed up or diluted.

When buying, check the honey for fermentation. When stirring, it should not be felt that it is not viscous, actively foaming, gas bubbles appear on the surface, that a specific sour smell comes from it, and there is also an alcohol or burnt taste.

Before buying a large amount of honey, buy 100-200 grams for a sample.

Beware of purchasing honey from apiaries located along highways with heavy traffic. In such honey, there may be an increased amount of lead compounds and other substances that fall on flowers with car exhaust. With nectar and pollen, lead gets into honey, and this is dangerous for the health of those who consume it.

Honey collected in areas with unfavorable ecology is very harmful.

How to identify impurities in honey?

To determine various impurities in honey, the following methods are recommended. Pour water into a transparent jar, add one teaspoon of honey, stir - the honey will dissolve, an impurity will settle at the bottom.

In order to detect an admixture of flour or starch in honey, you need to pour 3-5 ml of an aqueous solution of honey (1: 2) into a jar or glass and add 3-5 drops of Lugol's solution (or tincture of iodine). If honey contains flour or starch, the solution will turn blue.

An admixture of molasses (a mixture of cool water and starchy sugar) can be recognized by its appearance, stickiness, and lack of crystallization. You can also mix one part of honey with 2-3 parts of distilled water, add a quarter of the volume of 96% alcohol and shake.

If there is starch syrup in honey, then the solution will take on a milky color. After settling this solution, a transparent semi-liquid sticky mass (dextrin) will settle. If the impurity is absent, the solution will remain transparent.

You can detect impurities of sugar (beet) molasses and ordinary sugar by adding a solution of silver nitrate (lapis) to a 5-10% solution of honey in water. If a white precipitate of silver chloride falls out, then this indicates the presence of an impurity. If there is no sediment, then the honey is pure.

There is another way: to 5 ml of a 20% solution of honey in distilled water, add 22.5 ml of methyl (wood) alcohol, with the formation of an abundant yellowish-white precipitate, it will become clear that honey contains sugar syrup.

To detect an admixture of inverted sugar (grated honey), there is a rather complicated method: grind 5 g of honey with a small amount of ether (in which fructose breakdown products dissolve), then filter the ether solution into a bowl, evaporate to dryness and add 2-3 drops of freshly prepared 1 % solution of resorcinol in concentrated hydrochloric acid (sp. weight 1.125 g).

If the impurity turns orange (to cherry red), then there is invert sugar.

An increased percentage of sucrose in honey, which can be established in the laboratory, indicates its poor quality: in natural flower honey, sucrose is not more than 5%, not more than 10% in honeydew. The better the quality of natural honey, the less sucrose it contains. "Sugar" honey has its own organoleptic characteristics: the smell of old honeycombs, insipid inexpressive taste, liquid consistency (if it is fresh), during long-term storage it becomes thick, sticky, sticky.

"Sugar" honey (the bees were fed or fed with sugar), like all non-natural honey, is distinguished by the absence of vitamins, organic acids, protein and aromatic substances, and mineral salts. In sugar honey, silicon is the main element, and other salts are practically absent, there are only traces of them. In natural honey, the opposite is true.

If the honey does not crystallize, then it can be assumed that there is an admixture of potato molasses.

Advice!

In order to detect an admixture of honeydew honey, pour 1 part of an aqueous solution of honey (1: 1) into a glass and add 2 parts of lime water, then heat the mixture to a boil. If brown flakes are formed that precipitate, then this indicates the presence of an admixture of honeydew honey.

How can you spot a fake?

In a cup of weak warm tea, add a little of what you bought under the guise of honey. If you are not deceived, the tea will darken, but no sediment will form at the bottom. Over time, honey becomes cloudy and thickens (candied) - this is a sure sign of good quality. And not, as many mistakenly believe, that honey has deteriorated.

Sometimes honey during storage is divided into two layers: it thickens only from below, and remains liquid from above. This suggests that it is immature and therefore should be eaten as quickly as possible - unripe honey only lasts for a few months.

Attention!

Careless beekeepers do not take out bees to collect nectar, but simply feed them sugar. Sugar honey is not natural. There is nothing useful in it. Such "sugar" honey is unnaturally white.

In real honey, there is no free water - in mature honey, water (about 20% of it) is completely bound in a true saturated solution. Honey with sugar syrup has a high moisture content, this can be checked in the following way: dip a piece of bread into the honey, and remove it after 8-10 minutes. Bread will harden in high-quality honey. If, on the contrary, it softened or completely spread, then in front of you is nothing more than sugar syrup.

Tricks of honey sellers designed for gullible buyers

First, plug your ears and don't listen to what they tell you. Check everything yourself. Of course, one honest seller can fall for a bunch of liars, but how do you know that the one who is standing in front of you is honest? Try honey not only from above, but also from the bottom of the jar. Feel free to put your spoon in the jar and don't listen to the salespeople who start yelling, "Don't ruin the product!"

Unheated honey - both fresh transparent and candied - is an effective antiseptic, and a clean spoon in a jar cannot spoil it. Another thing is if there was not honey at the bottom, or this honey was previously heated, which led to the loss of its antiseptic and all other healing properties.

Crystallization (candied) is a natural process for honey, which does not affect its quality and composition of nutrients. Don't let crystallized honey fool you. Do not come the next day to the seller who promised you uncrystallized honey. They will bring the same, but warmed up. And in no case should you heat honey, because. this turns it into a simple sweet substance, devoid of so many useful properties!