Honey is brewed by bees collecting nectar.

We call the honey made from nectar of different plants the honey of that plant. Litchi honey, for example, is honey made by bees collecting nectar from litchi, and their efficacy is similar to that of this plant.

Usually fake honey is not as sticky as real honey, and its permeability is not as good as real honey. You can understand these by comparison. If possible, you can taste it (real honey smells like flowers) and twist it by hand (real honey is smoother).

How to distinguish the quality of honey?

1. It is better to be white that looks pale to the naked eye.

2. Take a clean glass, add a small amount of honey, add 5 times of warm water and stir well, preferably without sediment.

3. Dropping 90% alcohol has no white flocculent precipitation and contains no maltose.

4. The water content should be around 17- 18%.

Drop honey on absorbent paper. If it seeps out gradually, it means sugar water is mixed. In cold weather, the white precipitation of honey is glucose crystals, which is a normal phenomenon.

Identification of royal jelly: the liquid level is flat without bubbles; The smell is slightly fragrant, and the mouth of the tongue is sour and slightly spicy; Insert a glass rod into it and stir it. The texture is uniform, stagnant but not touching, and the flow is not smooth.

Look: Pure honey is a viscous colloidal liquid, bright and moist. All kinds of honey have a fixed color. For example, linden honey is light amber, clear and bright, sunflower honey is amber, and the color of mixed nectar is not fixed, usually yellow-red. Stir the honey with chopsticks several times. When you lift chopsticks, you can see that pure honey is bright and transparent in bright places, while adulterated honey is turbid. True honey has strong light transmittance and uniform color; Inferior honey is turbid and has impurities. The new honey is light amber and transparent. Honey is brewed with boiling water, and it is good to dissolve without precipitation; Inferior honey is not easy to dissolve and has precipitation.

Smell: Real honey is sweet, while fake honey has no smell. Honey mixed with spices has an unusual smell. Real honey can give off a unique honey fragrance a few months after harvest, which is rich and lasting, and can be smelled when opened; Or put a little honey in your palm and rub it to smell it. It has a charming honey smell.

Taste: high-quality honey is sweet and has a long aftertaste. Adulterated honey has no floral fragrance, some fake honey has the taste of boiled sugar, and the fine products have the taste of white sugar water. Pure honey will melt quickly and have a strong floral fragrance; Adulterated honey crystals are not easy to dissolve at the entrance and have an odor. Honey is refreshing and sweet, and never stings the throat.

Chemical examination: the color of the iodine solution of honey mixed with starch will turn blue, and the honey mixed with maltose will appear white floc when the concentration of ethanol is increased. Honey mixed with other impurities is inserted into honey with red-hot iron wire, and there is a sticky substance on the iron wire.

Cryopreservation crystallization test: Honey will become solid after being stored for a period of time at 4 to 14 degrees Celsius, which is a physical phenomenon of honey. The real honey crystal has poor transparency, soft crystal layer and no sand feeling when twisted with fingers. Crystal is so soft that fake honey can't penetrate it. Real honey will melt quickly when pinched by hand. False honey has the feeling of hurting hands, and it melts slowly or does not dissolve. The real honey crystal has a low bite, while the fake honey crystal is crisp and loud.

In addition, pure honey is not easy to seep out when dripping on white paper, while honey mixed with water will seep out slowly. Pure honey has high concentration and slow flow. Drop a drop of honey on paper, and high-quality honey will be beaded and not easy to spread; Inferior honey is not beaded and easy to spread.

Of all the methods, I usually use chopsticks to pick up the last one. For the supermarket to buy honey, you can probably only recognize the brand, because fakes are very similar now. What brand to buy? Go back and try the above method. If it is good, just buy it next time.

In addition, it is best not to put honey in a glass container, which is easier to ferment.

Honey is an excellent food and health care product. However, there are many kinds of honey on the market at present, and it is difficult for consumers to distinguish the authenticity and quality of honey without certain professional knowledge. The author here introduces some common sense to identify the quality of honey.

First of all, from the appearance, pure and high-quality fresh honey is a viscous, transparent or translucent colloidal liquid with sweet taste and rich floral fragrance. When the ambient temperature is lower than 10℃, or honey is left for too long, it is easy to form solid crystals. Honey varies greatly from water white (almost colorless) to dark brown (dark brown) due to different honey sources. It is often a light-colored honey seed, which has a better taste and smell. Therefore, the color of honey can be used not only as the basis for honey classification, but also as one of the indicators to measure the quality of honey.

Secondly, check the foreign bodies in honey. Foreign bodies can easily cause honey to deteriorate, produce peculiar smell or become alcoholic and sour. The following simple methods can be used to detect impurities in honey:

Impurity inspection: put a small amount of honey into a test tube, dilute and dissolve it with distilled water, and observe after standing. If precipitation occurs, it means that impurities are mixed in.

Inspection of adding starch: If starch is added to honey, it looks opaque after mixing. You can also take a little honey sample, add 5 times distilled water, boil it, cool it, and add 1~2 drops of iodine solution. If it is blue, it means there is starch.

Alum inspection: Barium chloride solution can be used for inspection. Add a portion of honey to the test tube, dilute it with the same amount of distilled water and shake it evenly, then drop a few drops of 20%BaCl2 solution. If white precipitate is produced, it means that alum is mixed.

Check whether honey is polluted by heavy metals: You can use a cup of tea, pour in a proper amount of honey and stir evenly with chopsticks. If the tea leaves remain the same color, it proves that honey is not polluted; If the tea leaves turn gray, it proves that they are polluted. The darker the color, the heavier the pollution.

Test of mixed maltose and glucose: These two sugars have high concentration and high viscosity, unlike liquid honey or crystalline honey. Honey mixed with this sugar has great resistance when stirred with chopsticks.

Ammonium salt test: add 2g honey to the test tube, dilute it with the same amount of distilled water, then add 2ml 10% sodium hydroxide solution, shake well, and immediately put a wet pH test paper in the test tube. If the test paper turns blue, it means ammonium salt is mixed.

Inspection of rice soup mixed with dextrin: Honey mixed with this foreign substance is easily fermented by mold and smells sour and smelly.

The quality of honey can be distinguished from four aspects: color, fragrance, taste and concentration:

Color: true honey has strong light transmission and uniform color; Inferior honey is turbid and has impurities. The new honey is light amber and transparent.

Fragrance: Real honey can give off a unique honey fragrance after several months of harvest, which is rich and lasting and can be smelled when opened; Or put a little honey in your palm and rub it to smell it. It has a charming honey smell.

Taste: honey is refreshing and sweet, and never stings the throat. Honey is brewed with boiling water, and it is good to dissolve without precipitation; Inferior honey is not easy to dissolve and has precipitation.

Strong: high-grade honey has high concentration and slow flow. Drop a drop of honey on paper, and high-quality honey will be beaded and not easy to spread; Inferior honey is not beaded and easy to spread.