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Honey is a very popular product among the population. It has many medicinal properties. It is very useful for the human body as a preventive measure against many diseases. But it is only useful when it is completely natural. Unfortunately, a large number of people who sell this product add various foreign impurities to it in order to increase weight and, accordingly, get more benefits. These impurities neutralize the vitamin composition of bee nectar, negating the entire usefulness of the product. There are many ways you can check the quality and naturalness of honey. This can be done not only in specialized laboratories, but also at home.
Quality of honey at home
So how to determine the quality of honey at home? The most affordable and uncomplicated method is heating and weighing. For this, a closed container with bee nectar is placed in a container with water. This container is placed in a water bath. The water should be warmed up to a temperature of approximately 50 ° C. When the container is opened, a pronounced floral scent is immediately felt. If there is no smell, it is fake.
A container with honey is heated in a water bath
If a container with honey is heated in a water bath for a long time (about 1 hour), then natural high-quality honey will break down into several layers. If the product does not delaminate, it is not natural, but a fake.
How to define quality honey in other ways? The weighing method will help determine. For this, 1 liter of water is collected in a clean container. A mark is placed on the container at the level of one liter. After the water is poured out, and the container is dried and weighed. Next, the container is filled with honey to the mark and weighed. To obtain the weight of 1 liter of bee nectar, subtract the figure of the container weight from the resulting figure. After determining the weight of 1 liter of honey, it is divided by 1000 (which is the weight of water). In the Russian Federation, there is a standard for the density of natural honey. Its range is 1.4 to 1.6 kg per liter.
If the density is below the lower limit, then it is immature, or its quality is poor. A density higher than the upper limit of the norm indicates that the calculations were not performed correctly, or an error was made when weighing.
Determining the quality of honey on the market
A pronounced amber or golden color is a sign of heat treatment
When buying bee nectar from the market, quality can also be determined. Of course, the market is not the place where there is an opportunity to heat or weigh, but still you should not give up hope of purchasing a natural product. How to define quality honey and not fall victim to a fake product? An unnatural product has some characteristics that give it away:
- By looking closely at the product and noting it and its crystal transparency, you can put it back on the counter. Most often, these signs indicate that it was subjected to heat treatment, and accordingly, lost all its useful properties during it.
- The containers in which the bee nectar is offered also affect its quality. For example, the plastic, galvanized, or copper material in a container chemically reacts with honey, and this reaction produces poisons. So such a product will affect the body very, very badly.
- Drinking the first spoonful of natural honey, it can be noted that the throat begins to slightly tickle. It tastes slightly tart. If the taste of caramel or bitterness was noticed, it means that it has overheated several times, or some ingredients have been added to it.
- If there is a foam layer on the surface, this honey is too young, immature. Foam is an indicator of the fermentation process. Such honey cannot be stored for a long time. Soon, it will ferment, and it will be dangerous to use it.
- If honey does not smell, and its color is whitish, this is a sign of an admixture of sugar or sugar syrup. Nothing terrible will happen from the use of such a product, but it will not bring any benefit either.
- Another sign of poor quality honey is multiple layers. The honey should look like a homogeneous mass.
- With labeled containers, bee nectar can be weighed on independent market scales. If its density is less than 1.4 kg / 1 liter, it is immature.
Methods for checking honey
Authenticity is determined by a peculiar ductility
How to check the quality of honey at home? There are many methods to distinguish fresh and natural products from counterfeits. Authenticity is determined by a kind of ductility. Its water content should not exceed a certain percentage. It does not overflow from container to container; when filling the container, it lies in the honey pyramid. It is recommended to use a spoon when filling the container. It makes rotational movements, with the help of which the correct consistency of bee nectar is checked. It will be wrapped around the spoon with tape, which will be interrupted from time to time.
The density of bee nectar is higher than that of water. There are certain factors that are used to check this indicator. A 3-liter container can hold 4.5 kg of a good quality product.
A newspaper sheet will help determine the amount of watery substance present in the product. In order to conduct an experiment, you will need a small piece of newspaper and the honey itself. A small amount of nectar is laid out on the newspaper, which should fold into a turret without spreading or leaving a stain on the back of the sheet. A diluted product is a wet print on the sheet.
Fresh bread will help to recognize the quality of the product
Fresh bread will help to recognize the quality of the product. In order to determine whether the product is falsified, it is required to dip the crumb of the roll into it for a couple of minutes. If the bee nectar is fake, the crumb will absorb moisture and lose its original shape. With a quality product, the crumb will harden.
To find out if ingredients such as starch or flour have been added to honey, iodine, which is present in any home medicine cabinet, will help. The fact is that iodine, when stirred until it dissolves, reacts with flour and starch, staining the resulting substance blue.
Vinegar can also help determine naturalness. It will help identify additives such as chalk. If the latter was added to bee nectar, the vinegar will react with it, releasing carbon dioxide, which will bubble.
The ammonia detects the presence of starch. To carry out the check, you will need honey, water and ammonia, in a ratio of 1: 2: 1. When reacted with starch, the substance will turn brown.
Smell is one of the important indicators of naturalness. When purchasing a product, you should smell it. Fresh and high quality honey will have a floral scent. In case honey does not smell, it is artificial.
Honey sediment by heating
When heated, a low-quality product will precipitate.
Natural crystallized honey is more difficult to distinguish from viscous.The easiest way is to try to rub a small piece of it between your fingers. After a few minutes, the fingers will stop sticking, otherwise the fingers will remain sticky, and the sugar from the additives will be absorbed into the skin.
You can also try to set the crystallized product on fire, in order to determine its naturalness. Genuine honey will burn almost silently, and the surrogate will crackle and release black smoke.
The honey must have a color characteristic of its variety. If the honey is too dark, this is an indicator that it has been warmed up. White indicates added sugar syrup.
Honey quality indicators
There is a kind of fake honey
There is such a type of fake honey as sugar. It turns out in the process of feeding bees water with the addition of a large amount of sugar. It does not carry any value for the human body, since it is devoid of all vitamins. It doesn't even contain protein.
High-quality honey has a fragrant smell, a kind of transparency and taste. Consistency is considered an important indicator. The product should taste sweet, without bitterness and sourness, with a little astringency. The consistency looks like a viscous mass, which can be thick if the crystallization process has begun. The mass should not contain foreign additives in the form of parts of the bodies of bees or their larvae, wax, etc., it should be homogeneous. Another important factor is the absence of foam on the product, this is an indicator that the honey is mature and there are no fermentation processes in it.
Each type of bee nectar will have a different color. Honey collected from linden has a light yellow color, from sunflower - rich amber, from acacia - transparent, slightly golden.
An indicator of the quality of honey is its water content. The product should not contain more than 22% water. This indicator is determined either with a special device or at home by determining the density. Based on this indicator, the second is formed - viscosity. The lower the water content in the nectar, the higher the viscosity index. Viscosity indicates maturity.
Also, after a short amount of time, the crystallization process should begin in the product. This is the most important quality indicator. The lower the water content, the faster honey begins this process. Different varieties have their own time intervals for crystallization. In sunflower honey, it starts very quickly.
To determine the quality of honey, you should know its variety.
To determine the quality of honey, you should know its variety. It is also important to understand if this product is fake or fake. This is done by reacting to alcohol and mortar. To carry out an alcoholic reaction, it is necessary to mix honey, water and alcohol in a ratio of 1: 1: 10. As a result of mixing in the presence of honeydew, the solution should become cloudy. You can carry out the reaction with lime by mixing nectar, water and milk of lime in a 1: 1: 2 ratio. This solution should be brought to a boil, if there is a pad, dark flakes will appear on the surface of the solution, and the proteins will curl up and precipitate.
Honey has very valuable properties, saves from many diseases, tones the body, helps to lose weight, etc. But this all concerns only a natural product. In order not to waste your finances and buy counterfeit products, you should know the basic indicators of the quality of honey, which are described in this article.
