How to distinguish honey from sugar syrup. • Artificial honey

Liquid natural honey can only be within a month after it was collected. The honey collection lasts from the end of July to the end of September. If you are offered liquid honey in winter, it is most likely unnatural. High-quality real honey by this point should thicken and begin to crystallize.

2. Check if the honey is foaming

If honey foams on the surface, it means that fermentation processes are taking place in it. It begins when the volume of water in honey exceeds 20%. This honey is definitely not natural.

3. Smell the honey

Natural honey always has a characteristic smell. If the honey smells nothing, it has been produced artificially.

4. Check if the honey is stratifying

Take a close look at the container with honey and check if the mass is homogeneous. If the honey seems thicker at the bottom of the jar and thinner at the top, it's fake. Most likely, the manufacturer added an impurity. Often, unscrupulous manufacturers put a mixture of semolina with molasses at the bottom of the can.

5. Pay no attention to the color

Color is not an indicator of the quality of honey, it can only speak about its variety. For example, buckwheat and cherry honey are usually dark brown, while acacia honey is light. Other varieties of honey can be dark amber, amber, light yellow and even almost white.

Greetings to everyone in my beekeeper's electronic 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 sugary. 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 winter, it should not be runny, and if it is, 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 use 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 is divided into two layers during storage: 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!

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.

Fake honey has become widespread in the market. All their varieties are characterized by the absence of many valuable nutrients (vitamins, mineral salts, organic acids, proteins and aromatic compounds) and can be dangerous to human health. To get an accurate answer about the quality of food, you must contact specialized state laboratories or testing centers. There are also many folk methods to distinguish fake honey at home.

Appearance, color

Pure honey is always transparent and clear. Its viscosity can be studied by lowering a thin needle or stick into the dish, after which it will stretch with a long thread, and if interrupted, it will fall entirely, forming a “turret” on the surface of the product. A fake will behave more like glue, dripping and dripping from the knitting needle, it can even create splashes.

You can distinguish natural honey by its density, which must correspond to the varietal characteristics. At a temperature of 20°C, a quality product, when wound on a spoon, is wound like a ribbon in a long strip and is interrupted at a certain moment. Its structure is quite delicate, when rubbed in the palm of your hand, it is absorbed into the skin.

High-quality flower honey contains no more than 5% sucrose, honeydew - no more than 10%. Increased quantities can only be determined within the walls of the laboratory. Some features of the appearance and properties of the product should alert the buyer even during a cursory examination, making them suspect a fake:

• the smell of stale honeycombs;
• unexpressed fresh taste;
• too thin consistency for fresh honey or sticky, sticky and thick for a long-term stored product.

Warning: Honey of a pronounced white color may turn out to be sugar, dark brown - honeydew. An underdeveloped aroma or caramel flavor often indicates that the product has melted.

Consistency

Honey purchased in winter is usually hardened. If the product remains plastic in this season, it most often means that it is diluted or heated. There are varieties that do not shrink longer than others, but they are difficult to distinguish from a fake:

1. May honey contains a large amount of fructose, so it does not get candied for a long time. This is the earliest variety, one of the most beneficial to human health, but it is he who often turns out to be a fake.
2. Acacia honey also contains a significant proportion of fructose and water, therefore it is able to maintain plasticity for up to 1-2 years.
3. Greek honey is a great value, pine and thyme varieties are especially popular. They thicken only six months after collection, and under certain conditions, they can retain a liquid consistency for up to 1.5 years.
4. Chestnut honey is a viscous and dark variety that takes 6-12 months to shrink. With prolonged storage, it forms larger and larger crystals, and also begins to delaminate.

A liquid consistency is characteristic of unripe honey, which flows from the cutlery without forming a viscous thread. It is pumped out in case of a shortage of combs, it is not complete and biologically active, contains too much water and cannot be stored for a long time. Fermentation processes quickly begin in it, since the product is not sufficiently enriched with sucrose and enzymes.

Rules for choosing and purchasing honey

It is desirable to purchase honey in a private apiary from beekeepers whose product quality is confirmed by friends or known from personal experience. When buying a treat for the first time, it is better to limit yourself to a volume of 100-200 g in order to be able to calmly study it without serious financial expenses.

Before purchasing honey, it is necessary to check whether the fermentation process has begun in it. This is easy to do by gently stirring it, while there should not be a special viscosity, active foam formation and the appearance of gas bubbles, a burnt or alcohol taste, and a sour smell should be felt.

You should avoid buying honey collected in apiaries located in ecologically unfavorable areas, near roads with active traffic flow and an abundance of exhaust gases. The ingress of lead compounds and other heavy metals into bee products adversely affects human health.

Important! You can buy honey only if the seller stores it in a glass, wooden, ceramic or porcelain container. The use of metal utensils is unacceptable.

Methods for detecting counterfeit honey at home

A popular method for determining the quality of honey is the use of a chemical pencil. The product is applied in a layer on a finger, paper or spoon, the rod of the device is immersed inside or carried out from above. It is believed that a trace will remain on the fake, which will indicate the presence of water and sugar impurities. The method was studied by V.G. Chudakov in 1972, and his studies clearly demonstrated the unreliability of the results obtained.

A sample on blotting paper allows you to accurately distinguish fake products, but some samples of natural ones also fall into their number. It is carried out as follows: honey is placed on a sheet of blotting paper in a small amount and it is checked whether a watery spot has appeared on the reverse side. Its formation will almost always mean that the product is falsified.

There are also separate methods for detecting the presence of impurities in honey:

1. The easiest way is to stir a spoonful of the product in a transparent glass or jar of water. The impurity, if present, will settle to the bottom of the dish, while the honey will dissolve without residue.
2. Another method to distinguish a fake is to lower a hot stainless steel wire into the product. It will remain clear if the honey is real, and covered with a sticky substance if the sample is falsified.
3. Sugar or beet molasses in a product can be determined by combining a 5-10% aqueous solution of honey with a solution of lapis (silver nitrate). The formation of a white precipitate will indicate that honey contains the indicated impurity.
4. The dilution of the product with sugar syrup is also easy to see by mixing 22.5 ml of methanol with 5 ml of a 20% aqueous honey solution (prepared using distilled water). A large amount of whitish-yellow sediment will also indicate that the treat is diluted.
5. The presence of glucose syrup can be determined by combining the product with water and alcohol (1 part honey to 2-3 parts distilled water and a quarter volume of 96% alcohol). The solution should be shaken well: in the presence of foreign compounds, it will take on a shade of milk. If the liquid is given time to settle, the dextrin precipitates as a sticky, transparent substance with a semi-liquid consistency.
6. The lack of timely shrinkage of honey and its special stickiness also make it possible to recognize a fake. A solution of a quality product will remain unclouded as a result of the experiment.
7. Flour or starch impurities are easily detected using iodine. Honey is diluted in water in a ratio of 1: 2, take 3-5 ml of the resulting solution and combine with 3-5 drops of iodine tincture or Lugol solution. The appearance of a blue tint of the liquid will indicate a fake.
8. Determining the presence of invert sugar in a product is not easy. For this purpose, 5 g of the sample is triturated with a small volume of ether capable of dissolving the substances resulting from the breakdown of fructose. The resulting solution is strained into a bowl, evaporated and the dry residue is combined with 2-3 drops of a fresh 1% solution of resorcinol in saturated hydrochloric acid (specific gravity 1.125 g). The appearance of an orange or cherry hue indicates a positive reaction to the presence of the desired substance and the fake honey.
9. The addition of honeydew honey can be detected as follows: combine lime water and a 50% aqueous solution of honey (in a ratio of 2 to 1), boil the composition. The formation of a precipitate in the form of brown flakes indicates a positive reaction to the presence of an impurity.
10. The presence of chalk is easy to determine using vinegar essence, the aqueous solution of the fake in this case will hiss when it is added.

Video: About ways to fake natural honey in the program "Quality Mark"