How to determine good or bad honey. Home methods for determining the quality of honey

Many housewives are interested in how to test honey for naturalness at home, because this product is quite expensive, and fakes, alas, are quite common. In this article, we have collected some simple ways to determine the quality of honey and make sure it is natural, as well as some useful tips.

Honey has characteristic external characteristics that allow you to quickly identify a quality product.

Color

Each type of honey has its own unique shade, but even if you don’t know what a product of a particular variety should look like, you can determine the quality by holding the jar up to the light. If dark spots are present, it means that the honey was heated, and during heat treatment it loses its beneficial properties. If it is cloudy or has sediment, then most likely the product contains various impurities that can be hazardous to health.

Weight

The easiest way to determine whether the seller has added water to honey is to weigh the jar. The weight of one liter of any honey is about one and a half kilograms (the weight of different types of honey varies insignificantly). If the honey is significantly lighter, it means it has been diluted. When weighing, do not forget that the jar also has weight - a liter jar weighs 360 grams, a half-liter jar weighs 250.

Consistency

A high-quality product should be viscous, thick, viscous. To make sure that the honey is not fake, just dip a spoon into it - a stream should flow from it evenly and continuously, forming a small “mound” on the surface, gradually dissolving into the total mass. If it drips from the spoon or splashes form on the surface, it is a fake. If you have any doubts, take a drop of honey and rub it between your fingers. Real honey will be absorbed, but fake honey will roll into lumps.

How to check the quality of honey using water

To make sure that honey is natural, you can dissolve it in hot water. If the solution is uniformly cloudy, everything is fine, but if a sediment has formed at the bottom, it means there are impurities in the honey. If the solution turns out to be almost transparent, there is a high probability that sugar syrup was added to the honey.

How to test honey with iodine

To prevent the fact of dilution of honey from being determined by weight, unscrupulous sellers add starch or flour, which provide the low-quality product with “natural” thickness and weight. To determine whether purchased honey contains such additives, just dissolve a small amount of honey in clean water and add five to six drops of iodine to the solution.

If the solution turns blue, it means the product contains starch. If it turns any color other than natural yellow, the product contains other chemical impurities. In any case, there are no substances in natural honey that react with iodine.

How to test honey with vinegar

To disguise a low-quality product and pass it off as natural, counterfeiters often use chalk chips, while identifying such an impurity is not difficult. After dissolving a spoonful of honey in water, you need to add three to four drops of ordinary table vinegar to the solution. If the solution begins to foam, it means there is chalk in the product.

How to test honey using milk

Unscrupulous beekeepers may add sugar and sugar syrup to honey. The product obtained in this way loses all its beneficial properties. Regular cow's milk will help determine whether there is sugar in honey. You need to add a spoonful of honey to a glass of heated milk. If the honey slowly sinks to the bottom of the glass and completely dissolves in the milk, it is natural, but if the milk begins to curdle, it is counterfeit with added sugar.

How to test honey with a napkin

If, even after weighing the jar, you still have doubts that water was added to the product, you can perform a simple test. All you need is a regular paper napkin and a drop of the “dubious” product. If, after dripping honey onto a napkin, you see a speck of moisture spreading around the drop, water is present: natural honey does not release moisture.

Now, knowing how to check whether honey is natural or not, you will be reliably protected from counterfeits and low-quality products, and you will be able to delight your loved ones with a healthy treat without fear for their health.

In today's article we will talk about such a useful product as -.

We all know from childhood that honey is very healthy, and no matter whether we like it or not, we always try to have honey in our house. Many people use honey not only for the treatment of diseases, for cosmetic purposes, for massage, in the preparation of various culinary masterpieces, but also in many other areas of life. Therefore, due to the popularity of honey, people, unfortunately, have learned to make honey without bees and profit from buyers who do not know how to distinguish real honey from a fake, which not only will not be beneficial, but can also seriously harm our health.

So, let's arm ourselves with the necessary knowledge about honey, and learn how to choose real honey and not buy a fake.

Honey classification

Honey is distinguished by:

- origin;
- manufacturing method;
- color and consistency.

By origin:

— Monofloral — formed from the nectar of one plant (linden, maple, buckwheat, acacia, etc.).
— Polyfloral – mixed, formed from nectar from different plants (meadow, steppe, garden, etc.).

Honey comes in flower and honeydew varieties.

Bees produce honeydew honey not from the nectar of flowers, but from honeydew, the sweet juice secreted by leaves and honeydew (secretions in the form of liquid sweet drops of herbaceous aphids, scale insects, and clean flea beetles). Honeydew honey is dark in color, viscous, has an unpleasant aftertaste and a bad aroma. This type of honey is used for processing.

Bees collect flower honey only from flower nectar.

By manufacturing method:

Gravity flowing, freely flowing from the honeycomb, pressed and centrifugal, separated by centrifuge. This is the purest and most transparent honey. The method of obtaining honey using a centrifuge is the most common.

By color and consistency:

The consistency of honey can be liquid or thick (as a result of crystallized glucose).

The color of honey depends only on the variety. The color of real honey can be all shades of brown and yellow.

Below are the main types of honey:

Lime. Light yellow, easily crystallizes, has a characteristic odor. Used for respiratory diseases, good for colds and, including for inhalation. It has a good effect on the gastrointestinal tract and kidneys. Bees can collect about 40 kg of honey from one linden tree.

Acacia. Transparent, light, more liquid, with a slight acacia aroma. Crystallizes slowly. It is used for diseases of the cardiovascular system, gastrointestinal tract and female inflammatory diseases, not only internally but also externally, due to its bactericidal properties.

Buckwheat. Bright brown color, with a characteristic odor and slight bitterness. This type of honey is used in confectionery products. Treats diseases of the stomach, blood and skin

Field and meadow. Light amber or brown color, with a very pleasant smell and taste. It has almost all medicinal properties.

Fruit honey Collected from berry and fruit crops. Light amber, with a delicate smell and taste. Has dietary qualities.

Sunflower. Golden yellow in color, pleasant to the taste, crystallizes quickly. Anti-allergenic, but in terms of medicinal properties it is inferior to the main types of honey.

Types of fake honey:

– natural honey with additives;
– honey from products not of nectar origin;
– artificial “honey”.

When buying honey, pay attention to:

Price. If you want to buy honey cheaper, then they can sell you sugar syrup for a good price, which will be tinted with tea. This type of fake is mixed a little with real honey, and then it will be difficult to distinguish the difference from real honey. For counterfeits, sucrose, molasses, starch, chalk and even sand are used. Skilled beekeepers have learned to fake honey in such a way that it is difficult to understand even in laboratory conditions. The most common fake is when bees are fed with sugar syrup and as a result we get processed sugar, not nectar from the fields.

Color. Unnaturally white honey may turn out to be sugary. Unnaturally dark, even dark brown honey can be either melted (with a caramel flavor) or, in the worst case, honeydew (made by bees from insect secretions). Such honey not only does not contain useful substances, but is also harmful to health.

Each type of honey has its own natural color: flower - light yellow, linden - amber, ash - transparent, buckwheat - any shade of brown.

But any variety, regardless of color, if it is real and pure, will be transparent. While honey with additives will be cloudy and, if you look closely, with sediment.

Smell. If honey has a pleasant rich aroma, then it is real, because in fake honey you can hardly notice the smell, and if you can hear it, it’s because it comes from sweet water.

Taste. Real honey, when you taste it evenly, will dissolve completely in your mouth, there will be no crystals or powdered sugar on your tongue. Also, after real honey, your throat will feel a little sore.

All types of honey have a sweet taste, but some varieties have a specific taste (tobacco, chestnut and willow varieties have a bitter taste, and heather is astringent). Any deviations in the taste of honey indicate its poor quality. Other flavor defects may be due to the presence of impurities. Excessive acidity may be due to the onset of fermentation, the aroma of caramel is the result of heating and melting honey, bitterness is due to improper storage conditions.

Viscosity and consistency. Dip a toothpick into the plate, and if it is real honey, then it should stretch as a long continuous thread, and when the thread breaks, it will completely sink, forming a small hill on the surface of the honey, which will smoothly and slowly diverge. Natural honey is thin and delicate, easily absorbed into the skin without leaving lumps.

Real honey does not roll off the spoon quickly. Take a tablespoon of honey and turn the spoon several times in a quick circular motion. The honey will roll onto it, almost without dripping.

Dip a spoon into the container with honey. As you pull out the spoon, watch the honey drip off. A high-quality one will form a ribbon and lie down in a mound, and bubbles will form on its surface.

Natural honey can be liquid or crystallized. Crystallization time depends on the colors and storage temperature.

Most honey varieties crystallize in November-December. So, when buying candied honey at this time, there can be no doubt that it is real. If the honey in the jar has two layers: denser at the bottom and more liquid at the top, then it is a fake. Because few varieties of honey (heather, acacia, chestnut), which contain a lot of fructose, remain liquid until spring. Natural liquid honey in the middle of winter is a huge rarity. It can be either sugar (the bees were fed sugar) or melted.

Dip a piece of bread into honey for 10 minutes. In real honey the bread will harden, but in fake honey it will soften. This is a sign that sugar syrup has been added to the honey. Real honey contains no water at all.

Take a drop of honey and sprinkle it with a pinch of starch. If the starch remains on top of the yellow droplet as a white cap, the honey is real; if not, it’s fake.

Add a few drops of vinegar to a spoonful of honey diluted with distilled water. If chalk is present, the mixture will boil due to the release of carbon dioxide.

And if instead of vinegar you drop a few drops of iodine and it turns blue, then starch has been added to the honey.

Drop honey onto the paper and set it on fire. Real honey does not burn, does not melt or turn brown, only the paper around it will burn. If the honey melted, then the bees were fed sugar syrup, and if it turned brown, they were fed diluted sugar.

Video about the difference between real honey and fake honey

That’s all for today, and in the following articles, dear readers, we will introduce you to the methods of storing honey, and also dwell on its beneficial properties.

In order to buy a truly high-quality bee product, and not a counterfeit, it is important to know how to test honey for naturalness. This can be done with equal success both in the laboratory and at home. Cunning folk methods include testing using iodine, a chemical pencil, water, vinegar, milk and other improvised means.

What is counterfeit

Natural honey is usually mixed with sugar syrup, beet or starch syrup, saccharin, chalk, flour and other impurities.

Attention! Liquid honey sold in winter indicates:

• about product falsification;
• about deliberate removal from a crystallized state by heating, which deprives it of all healing properties.

You should also be wary of candied honey in the summer, as this means it is from last year.

How to check honey for naturalness

The quality and naturalness of a bee product can be determined in two ways: “by eye” and using special means. Let's look at the first method in more detail.

Checking honey by eye

Taste

Testing honey at home begins with tasting the product. The taste of the natural amber dessert is pleasant, tart, with a floral or herbal flavor. It should melt on the tongue, leaving a tingling, slightly burning aftertaste. It leaves no residue, solids or crystals behind. A light hint of caramel comes from heated honey, and a cloying sweetness comes from an admixture of sugar.

By color

Knowing the types of honey will help you easily identify fakes. As you know, each type of bee product has its own characteristic shade. For example, the linden variety is amber in color, the flower variety is golden yellow, the mustard variety is creamy yellow, and the chestnut variety is dark brown. But all of them, regardless of color, are transparent and clean. Fake honey is a little cloudy and has a sediment.

By smell

The quality of honey can be easily determined by its aroma. A natural product is fragrant with floral or herbal notes, while a dessert mixed with sugar, starch or flour has no odor - neither pleasant nor pungent.

By thickness and viscosity

Dip a thin wooden stick into the honey and then slowly pull it out. Real honey will follow it like a long thread. Having broken, the thread forms a tower on its surface, which is then slowly absorbed by the product. If the honey becomes similar to glue and drips from the stick in small splashes, then this is a surrogate.

By consistency

When making demands on the quality of honey, pay attention to its consistency. This natural beekeeping product has a thin, viscous, delicate structure. It rubs well between the fingers, melts and is absorbed into the skin, while the fake one leaves lumps on the hands, characterized by a rough texture.

We use improvised means

Attention! Foreign substances are mixed into honey for three reasons:

• to hide signs of damaged goods;
• to give it a natural and appetizing look;
• to add weight.

However, it is quite easy to expose unscrupulous sellers. Honey can be tested with iodine, a chemical pencil, vinegar, alcohol, paper, hydrochloric acid and other objects.

Determining the admixture of molasses

Mix one part honey with 2 parts distilled water and add a few drops of ammonia. Shake the mixture. If the solution turns brown and precipitates the same color, it means that the product is mixed with starch syrup.
You can determine its presence in another way: dissolve honey in two parts of water and add 2-3 drops of hydrochloric acid and 20-30 g of wine alcohol to the mixture. Cloudiness of the solution indicates the presence of molasses.

Detecting the presence of flour or starch

Let's look at how to test honey with iodine for the presence of flour or starch. Dilute the product with distilled water and drop a few drops of ordinary iodine into the solution. The blueness of the composition is a clear sign that flour or starch has been mixed into the amber dessert.

Attention! The darker the color, the more starch the bee product contains.

Checking for chalk

Dissolve honey in water and add a few drops of acetic acid (essence) to the mixture. If the solution boils, emitting a characteristic hiss and releasing bubbles of carbon dioxide, your dessert is “stuffed” with chalk.

“Exposing” sugar

In connection with the increasing cases of falsification of bee products, many people are interested in the question: how to test honey for sugar? You can do this in several ways:

• The sugar product is clearly distinguished by its suspiciously white color, taste reminiscent of sweet water, lack of astringency, and faint odor.
• Add it to hot milk, and if it curdles, you have a fake with an admixture of burnt sugar.
• Dissolve 1 teaspoon of honey in a cup of weak tea, and then examine the liquid. Sediment at the bottom of the cup is a sign that the quality of the honey leaves much to be desired.
• Immerse the bread crumb into the dessert and leave in it for 10 minutes. Then take it out and inspect. Softened bread indicates the presence of sugar syrup, hardened bread indicates a quality product.
• Place a little amber dessert on a piece of paper (newspaper or toilet paper) that absorbs moisture well. If it “smears” on the paper, leaving wet marks, or seeps through it, you have bought a surrogate mixed with sugar syrup or water.

How to Test Honey Using a Chemical Pencil

A chemical pencil is an effective tool that you should definitely take with you to the market or beekeeping fair. Its peculiarity is that it changes color when it comes into contact with moisture. Before purchasing honey, immerse your tool in it. If it changes color, it means they are trying to sell you a product diluted with water under the brand of natural. Testing honey with a chemical pencil is also carried out in order to identify impurities in sugar syrup.

The easiest way to check quality

1. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of honey in a glass of warm water and leave the mixture for 1 hour. Sediment formed at the bottom of the glass or flakes that float to the surface indicate that the bee product is unnatural.
2. Drop honey onto the paper and set it on fire. If the product is of high quality, only the paper will burn, and the honey will remain intact - it will not char, burn or darken. The counterfeit product will turn brown and melt slightly, leaving a characteristic smell of burnt sugar in the air.

Honey sometimes contains clear evidence of its naturalness - particles of pollen or wax, bee wings. However, this fact cannot be a 100% guarantee. When purchasing, pay attention to the main indicators of honey quality - color, smell, viscosity and consistency. Subject it to all of the above methods of testing and enjoy the great taste of a natural product.

All materials on the Priroda-Znaet.ru website are presented for informational purposes only. Before using any product, consultation with a doctor is MANDATORY!

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

Features of honey testing

Falsified honey is sold not only in the market, it is also 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 permissibility of storage. The nutritional value of honey is affected by the amount of carbohydrates it contains and its ripeness. Its taste and medicinal properties depend on the maturity of honey.

How to check honey for naturalness by external signs

Sometimes it is necessary to check the naturalness of honey when purchasing it at the market or in a store without the use of additional substances. The fastest and easiest way to check honey is by external signs, without detailed analysis:

• Natural honey is easily rubbed between your fingers and absorbed by the skin of your hands.
• Examine the surface of the honey. There should be no foam in the form of bubbles on it. Fermentation, foaming is a sign of immaturity or addition of water. Natural honey contains particles of pollen, wax, and other natural inclusions. Honey that is too pure and transparent is most likely artificial.
• Smart buyers do not strive to purchase liquid honey, because “candied” honey is more difficult to fake. Natural honey crystallizes over time; fake honey crystallizes very slowly or completely. At the end of autumn and winter there is no liquid natural honey; even late varieties crystallize. There are exceptions to the rule; some types of honey are always liquid: linden, May, buckwheat, fireweed, and acacia. In summer, crystallized honey is last year's or even older.
• Natural honey tastes sweet, but moderately, a little tart. In the mouth it may cause a slight tingling or burning sensation. Artificial honey does not have such taste qualities. Honey acquires a slight caramel flavor 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 and carcinogenic.
• Another sign of the naturalness of honey is its smell. The natural product has a characteristic, easily recognizable fragrant aroma; the fake product has no odor.

It is very difficult to check honey for naturalness in market conditions. The methods discussed cannot protect you from all possible frauds. Choose honey based on color, smell and consistency.

How to determine the naturalness of honey by viscosity

A more detailed check of honey can be done at home; testing the product for viscosity will help with this. 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 testing honey viscosity:

1. Dip a tablespoon into the honey and quickly swirl it several times. Natural, high-quality honey will wrap around the spoon without dripping.
2. Dip a teaspoon into honey. After removing it, watch how the honey drips from it. The process should occur slowly, in large drops. Most of the honey will remain on the spoon. This happens because mature honey is very viscous, containing about 21% water. Immature - more liquid.
3. Dip a wooden stick into honey. Pick her up. The honey should flow in a continuous, viscous stream. Natural honey does not drip, does not splash, and forms a slide on the surface, which gradually becomes equal to the rest of the mass.

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

Checking the quality of honey at home by heating and weighing

Even laboratory tests 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 testing honey by heating:

• Place a closed jar of honey (50 g) in a vessel with water. Heat the honey for 10 minutes in a water bath at a temperature of about +45? C. Then open the lid and make 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 honey being studied begins to separate, it means it is natural, otherwise it is a fake.

You can determine the quality of honey at home by weighing it by its density. Pour 1 liter of water into the vessel and mark its level with a marker. Pour out the water and dry the jar. Fill the vessel with honey to the mark. Weigh the container of honey very accurately, down to the 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 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 - the honey is immature, of poor quality; if it is above the upper limit of the range - there is an error in calculations or when weighing.

Testing honey at home using unconventional methods

Even high-quality honey can show signs of fakeness when purchased. It is very difficult to distinguish natural honey from adulteration. 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 recommend 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 determined by setting it on fire. Spread honey on a piece of paper and set it on fire. 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 or change color. The product will melt if the bees were 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 onto a plate, add three times as much water and begin to vigorously shake the plate in a horizontal direction. A pattern resembling a honeycomb is formed on the surface of the natural product.
3. Place a piece of bread in honey and wait for 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 sugar syrup has been added to the honey.
4. You can test honey using a stainless steel wire. Heat the wire over a fire and immerse it in honey. Take it out and inspect it. If the wire is clean, then everything is fine, if some particles are stuck to it, then this indicates the presence of impurities that make the honey of poor quality.
5. The simplest method of testing honey for the presence of water is using loose paper. Take a napkin, blotter or piece of newspaper and drip honey onto 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 invert sugar, which is used to create artificial honey. To conduct the experiment, you will need drugs sold in pharmacies - ether, resorcinol, concentrated hydrochloric acid. Grind some honey with ether. Filter the resulting solution and 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. An orange to bright red color indicates the presence of invert sugar in honey.

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

Determining the naturalness of honey and the presence of impurities

The naturalness of honey can only be determined with 100% certainty in a laboratory, but only a few people submit honey for testing. “Home” methods for 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 look at how to determine the presence of impurities in honey:

• Examine a solution of honey and water under the light: if the honey is high-quality, natural, it will be cloudy or iridescent. Impurities will create sediment.
• Place a drop of honey on your palm and run it over it with a chemical pencil. If there are impurities or water, 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 may be present in natural young honey.
• During long-term storage, light crystals may form in honey, and an unsugared brown mass will remain in the center - this is a sure sign of the presence of impurities.

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

How to test honey for sugar

Mixing sugar syrup into honey and feeding bees sugar are the most common ways to adulterate 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. This honey tastes sickly sweet, and the color is suspiciously white.
2. During storage, liquid honey with the addition of sugar syrup becomes gelatinous and does not crystallize. “Sugar” honey has no astringency, it is perfectly transparent, without aroma.
3. Sucrose (cane sugar) is detected in the honey solution by lapis (silver nitrate). The honey solution for this experiment should be 5-10 percent. The loss of a white silvery precipitate is a sign of falsification of honey.
4. Place a spoonful of honey into a cup of weakly brewed black tea and stir until it is completely dissolved. If the tea becomes cloudy, it means there is sugar in the honey. High-quality honey does not leave sediment; the tea will only darken slightly.

Methods for testing honey with additional substances

The most common methods of testing honey for its 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 2 to 1 ratio.

Testing honey for flour using iodine

Unscrupulous beekeepers add flour or starch to honey to increase its mass or thickness. The admixture of starch, starch syrup, and flour in honey is determined by adding iodine tincture to the initial solution. Natural honey contains no elements that react with iodine.

Testing the quality of honey using iodine is the most common and is done as follows:

• 3-4 drops of iodine are enough for a solution of adulterated honey to turn blue if it contains starch or flour 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 starch-containing 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 and its color will not change.

Acetic acid for determining chalk chips in honey

The admixture of chalk chips increases the weight of the product and masks its poor condition. This honey is counterfeit. Adulteration of honey using chalk chips is easily detected by using ordinary table vinegar or vinegar essence. Chalk reacts with acetic acid, which is accompanied by the release of carbon dioxide.

Add a little acetic acid to the original solution, a couple of drops is 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 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

Starch syrup added to honey worsens its most valuable properties. Honey “flavored” with molasses has increased viscosity, has a pronounced molasses smell, and has a reduced content of reducing sugars. Residues in the adulterated sulfuric acid formed during the technological processing of molasses precipitate under the influence of certain reagents, for example, ammonia.

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

Testing honey for sugar using milk

If the bees were fed sugar, then it, like any unnatural honey product, does not have medicinal properties. It does not contain the beneficial components of natural honey: vitamins, organic acids, aromatic substances, protein, mineral salts. You can determine “sugar” honey without complex experiments, by using milk.

Add honey to hot cow's milk; if it curdles, then the honey has been adulterated using burnt sugar. Real honey will dissolve in the milk, gently sinking to the bottom of the bowl.

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” testing methods are simple and affordable, but they do not provide 100% confidence in the correctness of the results of an experiment to determine the quality of honey. You should not immediately purchase a large jar of honey from an unfamiliar beekeeper; first take a small one and examine the honey for quality and authenticity.

At the end of summer, the markets are flooded with golden jars of honey in every possible flavor and color. If you intend to thoroughly buy a medicinal delicacy at the fair, arm yourself with several rules for choosing it correctly. What excellent honey should be like and how to distinguish it from counterfeit, said Professor of the Department of Beekeeping named after. V. A. Nestervodsky National University of Bioresources and Environmental Management Viktor Polishchuk and beekeeper from the Kyiv region Vladimir Lozovoy.

The fact that in Ukraine there is an extremely wide range of types of honey, while many countries produce only 1-2 varieties is a fact established by experts; you will not find imported bulk honey in the markets. But you can add some water to it, replace the product of processing nectar and honeydew with ordinary sugar syrup, sell 2-3-year-old honey, which has been melted many times and is already devoid of any benefit. Today there are plenty of apiaries and honey supplies, competition in the market is high and a normal beekeeper strives to satisfy the buyer, and not to sell the goods at any cost, but there is no guarantee that you will come across a producer personally, and also a conscientious one. A self-respecting beekeeper will never mix the remains of honeycombs and dead bees into honey, supposedly to prove that the honey is natural, but will let the buyer smell and even taste it. By the way, buckwheat honey is becoming almost a rarity - it is now more profitable for farmers to deal not with buckwheat, but with seeds for oil, so the sunflower variety is “in trend”.

Signs of naturalness

Visually. The best honey is so thick that when poured from jar to jar it literally forms a pagoda-like mound that takes time to spread out. This is because it contains no more than 17-20% water, and this is the consistency of syrup, which contains 4 cups of sugar and 1 cup of liquid. Whether honey is diluted with water can be determined by its weight: a kilogram of honey fits in a 0.8-liter container, and a liter jar of normal honey weighs almost one and a half kg. A conscientious seller at the market will allow you to check the consistency of the product with a stick or spoon: if the honey stretches like a thin thread, it is of high quality, while adulterated honey drips from the spoon and is instantly drowned in the mass. In appearance, it will not be uniform and transparent, like natural, but rather cloudy, with sediment at the bottom or stratified (often semolina and molasses are placed on the bottom, and honey is only placed on top). Foam is also a bad sign; the honey is either unripe or fermented.

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Touch and taste. Good honey always slightly irritates the throat with its astringency, and the sourness is not felt (it is a sign of an unripe or spoiled product). A drop of normal honey, rubbed with your fingers, is easily applied and absorbed into the skin, but honey containing additives is simply rolled into rolling pins. Good honey always has a strong, specific aroma, often floral or pollen-like, but bad honey smells less and less the more syrup is mixed into it.

Solid or liquid. The more nutrients there are in honey, the faster it will harden. When choosing honey, remember that in the summer it should only be syrupy if pumped out this season, and only the rapeseed variety from the spring honey plant thickens very quickly and, extracted in the spring, will already be in bars by August (liquid - barely yellow, crystallized - almost white colors). And when going to the market in autumn or winter, consider only candied honey - at this time there is no other normal product (there is also an exception: the acacia variety, which stores its liquid form for a long time). A decent beekeeper will have liquid honey in the winter, but will not sell thickened honey in the summer: in the first case, it will most likely be melted (and you can only melt it carefully, at a temperature no higher than 37°, otherwise all the beneficial properties will go down the drain), in the second case, it will be unmelted, but also last year.

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Home check. Just in case, do not immediately purchase a three-liter jar from an unverified outlet, but take a mayonnaise jar for testing and experimentation. You can test your honey with a simple piece of bread. Dip it into the purchase for 10-12 minutes - if it softens, it means you bought banal syrup, and in natural honey the bread will harden. Honey diluted with water will form liquid stains on a sheet of paper or will leak, but a good product will remain unchanged. If you poke the honey with the hot tip of a knife, nothing will remain on the metal, while counterfeit honey will leave a layer of burnt sugar (as when making homemade candy). Dilute a teaspoon of honey in half a glass of hot water: low-quality honey will not dissolve completely, and if you pour a little alcohol into the resulting liquid, it will also become cloudy. The solution of real honey after all these manipulations remains transparent, like a tear, and will fail only if it is honeydew from coniferous trees. By the way, all additives will float or settle if you take the distillate for testing. You can also drop iodine into the same mixture, and if the seller mixed starch, it will turn blue. And when you add vinegar, bubbles may appear: clear signs that there is chalk in the honey. The last method is to sprinkle a drop of honey with a pinch of starch. Ideally, the white powder will remain a separate layer, but artificially mixed honey will certainly react with it in some way.

According to the documents. Laboratory tests will quickly find any impurities and excess water in honey, so it would be a good idea to ask the seller for the apiary’s veterinary and sanitary passport and a certificate of conformity (expert conclusion). If it is there, it means that the product passed the test without problems, because the control will easily show even an excess of sucrose content by even just 5 percent. The document must have a laboratory seal and a mark indicating that it has passed radiological control. And make sure that the certificate is accompanied by a receipt for payment for the research and with a date that coincides with that indicated in the expert conclusion.

Tatiana Malinovskaya