How can you tell if your honey is good? Do the "matchstick test."

Honey is delicious and has some health promoting properties. Honey is a sugary substance, so you should not overdo it. In small amounts it can be beneficial and can also pamper your palate. This is only possible if you use real, high quality honey.

How to check if honey is good?

It can be difficult to buy valuable honey. Some retailers and manufacturers make it even more difficult. Some honey producers and sellers even add ingredients like sucrose or corn syrup to their honey. It is often difficult to find information on the package that the honey was not produced in the EU.

Sometimes it only takes a moment to notice that we are dealing with artificial honey. It looks and tastes very similar to real honey, but in reality it is a synthetic product, made from sugar.

How to recognize good honey? Microscopic analysis can help determine the type of pollen and its percentage content. This allows you to determine the origin of the honey. High-performance liquid chromatography can detect the presence of sucrose syrup in honey using a refractometer detector. Unfortunately, most people do not have this capability. So are we doomed to counterfeit honey? Not necessarily.

The matchstick test for honey veracity

There are simpler and more natural ways to identify good honey. One of them is the "matchstick test". While it sounds complicated, it's not difficult to do. It's simple: dip a match in honey, then light it. It should work if it does. If it sparks or lights up, you know you're dealing with authentic, unadulterated honey. Real honey is flammable, which not everyone knows.

Homemade honey recipes

What are some other ways to tell the difference between good honey? Pay attention to whether the honey forms a cone when it spills on the plate. It should not spill flat on the plate. It is likely that you have purchased artificial honey. Natural honey can cause streaking when it dissolves unevenly and slowly in water.

Honey is very heavy and has a density of about 1.4 g/cm3. This means that a liter should weigh more than 1 kg, or closer to 1.4 kg. If this is not the case, you are probably dealing with a counterfeit.

Many people choose liquid honey to avoid crystallized honey. It is the change in state from liquid to solid that indicates you are dealing with a natural product. Each honey crystallizes differently. Depending on the type, it can take anywhere from a few days to several months. It is not a good sign if the product has been around for a while and still looks exactly the same.

An irregular texture with swirls or foam on top is a good sign. Honey that looks perfect should be cause for concern.

Good honey is expensive. There may be a cheater behind the low price.