How to Know Honey's Quality?

High quality honey can be distinguished by, fragrance, taste, and consistency. Ripe, freshly collected, high quality honey at 20°C (68°F) should flow from a knife in a straight stream, without breaking into separate drops. After falling down the honey should form a bead. The honey when poured should form small, temporary layers that disappear fairly quickly, indicating high viscosity. If not, it indicates excessive water content (over 20%)of the product. Honey with excessive water content is not suitable for long term preservation.

In jars, fresh honey should appear as a pure, consistent fluid and should not set in layers. Within a few weeks to a few months of extraction, many varieties of honey crystallize into a cream-coloured solid. Some varieties of honey, including tuepelo, acacia, and sage, crystallize less regularly. Honey may be heated during bottling at temperatures of 104-120°F to delay or inhibit crystallization without degrading the honey. Although, lack of crystallization is not proof of excessive heating or pasteurization. If transparent and reluctant to thicken, this may indicate that the bees were fed with sugar syrup or even sugar itself, which is bad for the bees and leads to inferior honey. A fluffy film on the surface of the honey (like a white foam), or marble-coloured or white-spotted crystallization on a containers sides, is formed by air bubbles trapped during the bottling process. This is a characteristic of unpasteurized honey.

A 2008 Italian study determined that nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy can be used to distinguish between different honey types, and can be used to pinpoint the area where it was produced. Researchers were able to identify differences in acacia and polyfloral honeys by the differing proportions of fructose and sucrose, as well as differing levels of aromatic amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine. This ability allows greater ease of selecting compatible stocks.

Source : wikipedia