How to identify the quality of honey and how to take it scientifically

Simple Identification of Genuine and Fake Honey:

High-quality honey is bright and transparent or translucent, with obvious floral aroma, pure smell, refreshing taste, soft and delicate, light aftertaste, no peculiar smell, and more viscous (dripping into beads on paper, no penetration. The concentration should not be too high, 42+ degrees is the most reasonable, which not only ensures nutrition but also ensures the natural floral fragrance), part of the honey crystallization (crystallization is a physical phenomenon when the relative content of glucose is high, the nature of crystallized honey is more stable, such as honey has crystallized, a small amount can be taken to rub and twist, the feel is delicate, and it is natural crystallization that can be rubbed soon, and the texture is rough and the grains are difficult to rub is doped with white sugar).Inferior honey is the opposite, the luster is dull, turbid, no aromatic flavor, the throat is spicy, the aftertaste is heavier, but it does not crystallize, the red-hot thick wire is inserted into the honey, the gas is real honey, and the smoke and burnt smell is fake honey.

Honey is not always better as it is. Honey is divided into mature honey and immature honey, and immature honey is not fully brewed by bees, so it has a large water content, low enzyme value and high sucrose content, but it can greatly improve the yield. The raw material cost of natural mature honey is very high, therefore, in order to reduce production costs and meet the sensory needs of consumers, some beekeepers and merchants use mechanical dehydration to replace the biological brewing process of bees, ultra-high temperature sterilization and concentration.

Although this method can kill the harmful bacteria in the honey, and also make the honey particularly viscous (the moisture content is less than 20%), but at the same time, it also destroys the nutrients and crystal nuclei in the honey, and its high viscosity is of little value, and it is not easy to crystallize, and some are deliberately mixed with thickeners (pectin, hydroxycellulose, etc.). The real ideal method is to use ripe honey for low-temperature pasteurization, which can not only preserve nutrients, but also kill harmful bacteria, and have normal crystallization. Only this kind of honey has a pure taste (natural floral aroma, sweetness exceeds sucrose, dry and throat) and medicinal and edible value.

That's why responsible companies don't want to mix up fish and don't pursue ultra-high consistency in order to ensure the naturalness of honey. However, honey is too thin, and the national standard stipulates that its water content cannot be greater than 24%. The simple way to identify is as follows:

A 714ml container can hold about 1 kg of honey, and if the specific gravity of honey is significantly lower than normal, the water content of honey is too high.

Precautions for use:

Any bee products that are used orally, such as honey, royal jelly, pollen, and propolis are generally taken with warm boiled water instead of boiling water, because bee products are pure natural nutrients, and some of their main nutritional active ingredients are afraid of heat, such as proteins, various enzymes, vitamins, nucleic acids, hormones, royal jelly acid and other substances are polymer compounds, and the structure is easy to change after high temperature, resulting in inactivation, which will greatly affect the health and beauty effects of bee products.

The quality of honey varies according to the different first, generally in the spring honey in the jujube nectar, acacia nectar, milk vetch honey, rape nectar and other light color, viscosity, aroma, sweet taste, better quality. Autumn honey such as buckwheat nectar, cotton honey and other dark color, slightly odorous, slightly sour taste, quality inferior.

Honey with less water, oily, thick as clotted cream, honey silk when picked up by wooden sticks and flowing into folds, sweet and pure, no odor impurities is better.

Under the microscope, a small number of pollen grains can be seen, which can be used to judge and identify the nectar source plant species.

Some fake honey, add starch, dextrin, sugar, etc., this kind of fake honey does not have the fragrance of honey, when the wooden stick provokes the honey silk is broken, the color is white, and there is precipitation at the bottom.

Honey is flat and sweet, has the effect of nourishing the spleen and stomach, moistening the lungs and relieving cough, smoothing the intestines, relieving pain, and detoxifying.

Honey should be slightly boiled when taking, and it is advisable to change color slightly, which can kill or inhibit pollen, germs, bacteria and other allergenic substances in honey.

Take in the morning on an empty stomach with warm water.

Huaxing is an old brand produced by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

At present, there are four main methods of honey counterfeiting: first, white sugar is boiled with water and sulfuric acid, and the longer the boiling time, the darker the color; the second is to use less sugar, use more water, and add thickeners to increase the concentration of fake honey; the third is to use caramel and syrup to directly pass off as honey; Fourth, add color thickener with syrup.

1. Look carefully.

Look at the color: Real honey is transparent or translucent in color. Because real honey contains some proteins, biological enzymes, minerals and pollen, it does not look very bright, white, pale yellow or amber, and light color is preferred.

Because fake honey is boiled with white sugar or passed off with syrup, it has a bright color, generally light yellow or dark yellow; Look at the shape: real honey is a viscous liquid, provoked by visible flexible filaments, and constantly flowing. Fake honey has suspended solids or precipitation, small viscosity, droplets when provoked, and there is a broken flow.

Real honey becomes thinner after exposure, while fake honey has no change or is more viscous. If the honey is very thin and flows easily, it may be mixed with water; Look at the label: Some honey products have ingredients such as sucrose, sugar, and fructose syrup that are not allowed to be added to pure honey products.

2. Smell carefully.

Real honey smells pure and natural, with a faint floral hint of botanical, while fake honey smells pungent or fruity sugar.

3. Taste it for yourself.

Real honey is sweet and delicious, with a sticky and mushy mouthfeel, a slight sour taste, and a long aftertaste. Fake honey tastes bitter or chemically strange when tasted carefully, has no aromatic flavor, and the crystalline blocks chew like granulated sugar, and the sound is crisp and loud.

Fourth, hot water dissolving.

Put a spoonful of honey into a cup, add four to five times hot water to dissolve it, and let it stand for three to four hours if no precipitation occurs, it is pure honey and good honey.

In addition, for the honey mixed with water or other impurities on the market, it can be identified by the following methods: distinguish the honey mixed with water and sucrose: drop the honey on white paper or straw paper, if the honey on the paper gradually seeps, it means mixed with sucrose and water; Distinguish between starch-blended honey:

Put a small amount of honey into a cup, add an appropriate amount of water, boil, wait for cooling, drop a few drops of iodine wine, if the color of the solution turns blue, it means that it is mixed with starch; Distinguish honey mixed with impurities: use a red-hot iron wire to insert it into the honey, if there is stickiness attached to the wire, it means that it is adulterated; If the wire is still smooth, it means that there are no impurities.

The method of identifying royal jelly: the liquid surface is flat, there is no air groove, the smell is slightly fragrant, the tongue has a sour and astringent taste when entering the mouth, and there is a slight spicy feeling. At the same time, the quality of the journey reminds consumers that they should also pay attention to the correct way to drink honey, not with water that is too hot, but with warm water.

It is difficult to say whether the honey is good or bad, and the honey of various plants generally has more or less the unique medicinal effects of its plants; The quality of honey generally depends on: whether the honey is ripe; Moisture content; Concentration; nutrient composition; the purity of the honey seed; and whether to process and add various additives; Whether it ferments and becomes sour, storage conditions, etc. It is recommended to buy real good honey from acquaintances, and various brands of honey are basically concentrated.

Now there are too many means of adulteration to make fake, and ordinary people simply cannot identify whether it is adulterated or not. You can only smell whether the fragrance of the flowers is strong, whether the sweetness is normal, and the general unprocessed honey will basically crystallize more or less, mainly to see whether the crystals are delicate, and they will be broken when they are twisted, and they are good if they are not broken without large particles.

There are many counterfeiting methods of honey, and the identification methods are not the same, and the simple identification methods are generally as follows: 1, mixed with water 2, mixed with sugar water or added with other sugar products such as high fructose syrup, maltose syrup, preserved fruit syrup, glucose syrup 3, starch 4, flavor 5, amylase.

1. Mix with water. Insert a chopstick vertically into the honey and lift it up to drip onto the raw-edged paper. If it is real honey, the honey on the raw edge paper will be a bead, and if it is honey mixed with water, the dripping honey will spread around.

2. Add starch syrup.

Caramel is also called maltose. Honey mixed with caramel does not crystallize easily. Take a little honey and put it in a glass, add 4 times the water, mix well, and then add medical alcohol drop by drop, mixed with caramel There are many white flocculents, otherwise it is slightly turbid, and there is no flocculent.

3. Add sucrose.

Honey will become solid after being stored in an environment of 4 to 14 degrees Celsius for a period of time, and the honey will be placed in the refrigerator after purchase, and the crystallization phenomenon will be observed for 24 hours: real honey is pinched by hand, and its crystals dissolve quickly. Fake honey has the feeling of being awkward, melts slowly or does not dissolve, real honey crystals are fine and soft, chopsticks can be inserted, fake honey is hard, chopsticks can not be inserted.

4. Add preserved fruit syrup.

Preserved fruit syrup, also known as white honey, is a starch syrup produced by biochemical reaction with rice and other starch-rich products, which is difficult to identify by a simple method.

5. Incorporate starch.

Dissolve and dilute the honey with an appropriate amount of water (do not boil), drop 2 drops of iodine solution, and a blue reaction will appear to prove that it contains starch.

6. Add flavor.

Put a little honey in the palm of your hand and rub it repeatedly for 30 seconds before identifying the smell. After rubbing, the aroma of the honey with flavor is seriously lost and all that is left is a syrupy flavor, and the real honey still has a light floral aroma.