Only natural mature honey has invaluable healing properties. Therefore, checking its quality is of great importance. Take note of the simple techniques for doing it at home. Content:
-
Features of checking honey
- External signs
- Viscosity
- Heating and weighing
- Unconventional methods
- The presence of impurities
- How to check for sugar
-
Checking with additional substances
- With iodine
- Acetic acid
- Ammonia
- With milk
When buying honey from an unverified beekeeper, you run the risk of buying either low-quality natural honey, or even artificial honey. Unripe or old honey has no medicinal properties, artificial honey is useless, and extraneous additives such as starch, chalk, flour, sugar, water make it a low-quality product.
Features of checking honey
Counterfeit honey is sold not only in the market, but also in stores 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 admissibility. The nutritional value of honey is influenced by the amount of carbohydrates it contains and 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 and is absorbed by the skin of the hands.
- Examine the surface of the honey. There should be no foam in the form of bubbles. Fermentation, foaming is a sign of immaturity or addition of water. Natural honey contains pollen particles, wax, and other natural inclusions. Too pure, transparent honey is most likely artificial.
- Literate buyers are reluctant to purchase liquid honey, because "candied" is more difficult to counterfeit. Natural honey crystallizes over time, fake honey crystallizes very slowly or is completely absent. In late 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: linden, May, buckwheat, fireweed, acacia. In summer, crystallized honey - last year's or even older.
- Natural honey tastes sweet, but in moderation, a little tart. In the mouth, it can cause a slight tingling sensation, burning. Artificial honey does not possess such taste qualities. Honey acquires a light caramel flavor when heated. "Warm" honey has a more presentable presentation, but less useful. It loses its unique medicinal properties at a temperature of +50 degrees and even at + 35-40 degrees 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 test honey for naturalness in market conditions. The considered methods cannot protect you from all possible falsifications. Choose honey for color, smell and consistency.
How to find out the naturalness of honey by viscosity
A more detailed check of honey can be done at home, this will help the study of 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 honey viscosity:
- Dip a tablespoon in honey and turn it quickly several times. Natural, high-quality honey will wrap around the spoon without dripping from it.
- Dip a teaspoon in the honey. After removing it, watch how the honey drips off of it. The process should take place slowly, in large drops. Most of the honey will remain on the spoon. This is due to the fact that mature honey is very viscous, it contains about 21% water. Immature is more liquid.
- Dip a wooden stick in the honey. Pick her up. The honey should drain off in a continuous, viscous stream. Natural honey does not drip, does not splatter, forms a hill on the surface, which is gradually compared with the rest of the mass.
Ripe, high-quality honey is very viscous, its moisture content according to GOST is not higher than 18-20%. Honey pumped out early is unripe, 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 research, the presence of pollen.
Instructions for checking honey by heating:
- Place a sealed honey jar (50 g) in a jar of water. Heat the honey in a water bath for 10 minutes at a temperature of about +45 ° C. Then open the lid and assess the odor. It must be tangible. The lack of smell is a sign of falsification.
- Heat the honey in a water bath for a longer time, about an hour. If the studied honey begins to exfoliate, it means that 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. Fill the jar with honey to the mark. Weigh the jar with honey very accurately, to the gram. Subtract the weight of the jar, get the exact weight of a liter of honey. Divide the weight of the honey by the weight of the water, i.e. per 1000. The accepted standard of honey density 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 - unripe honey, poor quality, above the upper limit of the range - an error in calculations or when weighing.
Checking honey at home using unconventional methods
Even quality honey when purchased can show signs of a fake. It is very difficult to distinguish natural honey from counterfeit. The best way not to be mistaken about 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, and you want honey, then use the unusual methods of checking honey at home:
- The authenticity of honey can be established by burning it. Spread honey on a piece of paper and light it. Observe 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 out or change color. The product would melt if the bees were fed sugar syrup instead of nectar. The brown color of the product signals the presence of sugar in it.
- Pour a spoonful of honey on a plate, add three times more water and begin to shake the plate vigorously in a horizontal direction. A honeycomb-like pattern forms on the surface of a natural product.
- Put a slice of bread in the honey, wait a while. After 10-15 minutes, check its condition. In a good pure product, the bread will harden, if the bread has softened, then sugar syrup has been added to the honey.
- You can check honey using stainless steel wire. Heat the wire over a fire and immerse it in honey. Take it out and inspect. If the wire is clean, then everything is fine, if some particles have adhered to it, then this indicates the presence of impurities that make honey of poor quality.
- The easiest method to test honey for water is with loose-textured paper. Take a napkin, blotter, or piece of newspaper and drip honey on it. There should be no moisture around the drop, the paper should remain dry.
- The most difficult thing is to independently determine the impurity of inverted sugar, which is used to create artificial honey. To carry out the experiment, you will need drugs sold in the 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 left after evaporation of the essential honey. Obtaining 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 a laboratory, but only a few people donate honey for research. "Home" methods of determining the naturalness of a honey product do not always give an absolutely error-free result, but sometimes they help to distinguish a good product from a fake.
Let's consider how to determine the presence of impurities in honey:
- Consider a solution of honey with water to light: if honey is of high quality, natural, then it will be cloudy or iridescent. Impurities will create sediment.
- Place a drop of honey on your palm and trace over it with a chemical pencil. If there are impurities or water, then the trail will be greenish or purple in color. In high quality honey, the chemical pencil will not leave a trace. The test is not 100% reliable. Excess moisture can be found in natural young honey.
- When stored for a long time, light crystals can form in honey, and an unsugared brown mass will remain in the center - this is a sure sign of the presence of impurities.
So that honey is not only tasty, but also has 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 of falsifying 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:
- Adding sugar to honey gives it a sweet water scent, without the pleasant honey scent. This honey tastes sugary sweet, the color is suspiciously white.
- 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.
- Sucrose (cane sugar) is detected in a honey solution with lapis (silver nitrate). The honey solution for this experiment should be 5-10 percent. Falling out of a white silvery sediment is a sign of honey falsification.
- Put a spoonful of honey in a cup of loosely brewed black tea, 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 sediment, the tea will only darken slightly.
Methods for checking honey with additional substances
The most common methods of checking honey for naturalness are carried out on the basis of a solution of honey in water and some additional substances such as iodine, vinegar, ammonia, milk. To create a stock solution, mix distilled water with honey in a 2 to 1 ratio.
Checking honey for flour with iodine
Flour or starch is added to honey by unscrupulous beekeepers to increase its mass or density. The admixture of starch, starch syrup, flour in honey is determined by adding iodine tincture to the original solution. Natural honey contains 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 the solution of fake 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 additives that are not bee-like. The natural product does not react to iodine, its color will not change.
Acetic acid for the determination of chalk crumbs in honey
Admixture of chalk chips increases the weight of the product, masks its poor condition. Such honey is counterfeit. Falsification of honey with chalk chips is easily detected by using ordinary table vinegar or vinegar essence. Chalk reacts with acetic acid and releases carbon dioxide.
Add some acetic acid to the original solution, a couple of drops are enough. The presence of chalk in the honey will cause foaming and sizzling. Sometimes chalk is added in small quantities, and the reaction will not be noticeable if the acid does not touch 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
The starch syrup added to honey impairs its most valuable properties. Honey "flavored" with molasses has a high viscosity, has a pronounced smell of molasses, and has a reduced content of reducing sugars. Residues in the counterfeit sulfuric acid formed during the technological processing of molasses precipitate under the influence of certain reagents, for example, 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 is given by starch syrup. A solution of natural honey will not become cloudy when 96? alcohol. A solution with low-quality honey will become whitish, like adding milk.
Testing honey for sugar with milk
If the bees were fed with sugar, then, like any unnatural honey product, it does not have medicinal properties. It does not contain useful components of natural honey: vitamins, organic acids, aromatic substances, protein, mineral salts. It is possible to determine "sugar" honey without complicated experiments, by using milk.
Add honey to hot cow's milk; if curdled, the honey was forged 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 - watch the video:
These "home" methods of checking are simple and affordable, but they do not give 100% confidence in the correctness of the results of an experiment to determine the quality of honey. Do not buy a large jar of honey from an unfamiliar beekeeper at once, first take a small one, examine the honey for quality and authenticity.
