Cases of selling low-quality honey are frequent. Unripe and old honey, fermented or with the addition of such impurities as juices, water, corn syrup or starch syrup, falls under the definition of low-quality honey.
If you turn the spoon taken out of the container, then real mature honey will be wrapped around it in folds like a ribbon and flow down in continuous threads. When it is poured into jars, it lays down in a slide, and a liter of mature honey is almost 1.5 kg. Unripe honey contains a lot of water and therefore flows easily from a spoon. The same looks and honey, diluted with water or artificially obtained in a centrifuge from unsealed honeycombs. Sour honey or a person starting to sour will behave in the same way.
If we are not talking about chestnut honey or honey from white acacia, which can remain in a liquid state for a whole year, then by autumn this useful delicacy, as a rule, crystallizes. But it is impossible to focus on this factor alone, since honey from bees fed with sugar syrup is also crystallized. But there will be no benefit to the body from this product. An experienced person will be able to distinguish crystals of sugar honey, since they are harder and larger, and the more sucrose they contain, the coarser they are. Quality mature honey never foams. Foam means the beginning of fermentation and the immaturity of the product. Dead bees, wax and pieces of grass floating in the substance do not mean 100% naturalness of the product and its quality.
Often unscrupulous sellers add all these extraneous items on purpose to make honey look more natural to uninformed people.
There should not be any delamination in a container with honey, since semolina and molasses are often placed on the bottom, pouring honey only on top. Impurities, if any, are easy enough to identify even at home. Honey must be diluted in distilled water with equal proportions, mixed thoroughly and diluted with pure alcohol, taking 2 parts of the mixture to 10 parts of alcohol. The mixture is shaken thoroughly again. If honey contains honeydew, then the solution will be cloudy, moreover, if the honeydew content exceeds 25%, a sediment will appear.
The content of sugar syrup in honey is determined by adding a 5-10% lapis solution to it, if there is no sediment, this means the purity of the product. The amount of starch and molasses greatly degrade the quality of honey, and its presence can be determined by adding iodine to the mixture of honey and distilled water. If there is starch in the mixture, it will immediately turn blue. For density, chalk is also added to honey, this can be determined by adding vinegar.
It is enough to drop vinegar on honey, and if there are chalky impurities in it, they will sizzle and foam.
To give it an attractive appearance, store-bought honey is heated to high temperatures, which makes it completely dead inside. All useful substances evaporate after heat treatment, and instead of honey, almost pure glucose is offered. Therefore, it is impossible to add natural honey to hot, above 37 ° C tea, the benefits from it will be no more than from tea with sugar. Boiled honey is completely transparent, it looks like amber and shines brightly. Most of all trust is caused by honey, sealed in combs, since it is impossible to fake them. But even there it can be a product of sugar syrup fed to bees. It is best to buy honey directly from the apiary or from familiar beekeepers. When choosing on the market, it is necessary to require a certificate of honey quality.
