The honey sales season is opening soon, and a large assortment of choice leads buyers to a standstill. What to look for when choosing honey?
Honey is a versatile and incredibly healthy product. It can be used as a sugar substitute and is widely used in cooking. This product is rich in vitamins and minerals, acids and enzymes important for the body. Honey has antimicrobial and antiviral properties, is well absorbed, increases efficiency, improves cardiovascular activity and soothes the nervous system.
All this is true only if honey is natural. What are the signs and characteristics of real honey?
Maturity
Ripe aged honey is a high-quality and healthy product: it does not contain excess moisture and is not subject to fermentation. Unripe honey is sealed in combs and is not a ready-to-eat product. Manufacturers often dilute them with mature honey for quantity. This mixed honey is thinner and will probably ferment over time.
On the surface of unripe honey, air bubbles can be seen rising. This honey exfoliates into 2 distinct layers – dense and liquid.
At home, you can test the maturity of honey by placing a small amount on paper. Ripe honey will not spread, while unripe honey will wet the paper and spread as a stain.
Crystallization
Most often, we choose liquid honey, considering that thick candied honey is a low-quality product. In fact, not every natural chalk remains liquid for a long time – this is inherent in varieties in which there is less fructose, they crystallize after 2-3 years of storage.
Other types of honey become thicker and darker over time, and this is also an indicator of good quality.
Fake honey can also be crystallized. Fake thick honey has larger crystals than natural honey. Real candied honey will quickly dissolve in your mouth without residue, and a fake will leave hard, small pieces of sugar on your tongue.
Loose or packaged
Natural honey cannot be too cheap. Therefore, when buying a prepackaged product, trust a trusted manufacturer. Find out where the apiary is located, where the product is packed and in what year the honey was pumped out.
In natural bee honey, particles of wax and pollen are always visible. Although even here unscrupulous beekeepers have learned to cheat by adding these components on purpose. The most useful and natural is honeycomb and draft honey.
Be sure to ask to try 1 loose honey before buying it. Its taste should be pleasant, floral, not have any unpleasant extraneous shades. The clear caramel flavor indicates that it has warmed up before being sold. The smell of natural honey is fresh, floral or herbal.
The honey color should be pure, natural, the texture should not delaminate. Quality honey is always bubble-free.
Checking honey at home
If you have already bought honey, do not be lazy to check its naturalness at home. To know for sure if you will return to this supplier in the future.
Honey without impurities will completely dissolve in hot clean water. And if you later add a little alcohol to the water with honey, the mixture will remain transparent.
Add a drop of iodine to honey diluted with water. If the mixture does not acquire a pronounced yellow tint, then in front of you is low-quality honey, diluted with flour or starch.
Good honey will wrap around a spoon in folds, and fit into a jar in a slide.
If the purchased honey does not crystallize after 6-7 months (except for heather, chestnut or acacia honey), then this is also a fake.