Zhang Yuanming / honey concentration sparked controversy! What is the difference between "unprocessed honey" and "concentrated honey"?

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"Cold water must be used to soak honey water, and the water temperature should not exceed 40 degrees C, so that it will not destroy the most precious enzyme in honey!" Recently, when I heard about the marketing of a certain honey brand, I really did something to promote my honey. The question that comes out of my mind is, "when your honey is heated and concentrated at low pressure, does honey come into contact with a heat source of more than 40 degrees C?" If so, why pretend to ask consumers mysteriously not to soak honey with boiled water of more than 40 degrees C.

There is a constant war between sealing honey and concentrated honey.

In the face of the "unprocessed sealing honey" emphasized by small or delicate bee farmers in recent years, the traditional professional bee farmers can not help but question that there are professional bee farmers in the online community to counter the application requirements of bee friends to search the Internet for national honey evaluation. It is necessary to attach a concentrated record form for amateur bee lovers' own reference, fermented honey = stinky sour honey. Selling this kind of stuff only hurts your own reputation, ⋯⋯. "

The debate on honey concentration has never stopped in the beekeeping community. as the beekeeping technology is no longer closed, many emerging small beekeepers have adopted the more laborious "successive box culture method," emphasizing that the honey is only collected and sealed, and the honey harvested is not heated and concentrated to win the recognition of the market. Of course, this also aroused the concern and dissatisfaction of traditional bee farmers, and the two sides criticized each other. Because consumers do not understand the harvest process of honey, they receive messages from both sides, one saying that the other is fake honey, and the other criticizing that the other will burst the bottle or ferment acid if it is not concentrated, so they can't help feeling "foggy"!

Capping honey vs concentrated honey: after the honeybee collects nectar and puts it into the nest, it will continue to process and brew, constantly blowing wind work, promoting evaporation and reducing moisture. After more than a week of brewing, the bee reduces the moisture content of honey to less than 20%, so that it can be preserved. The finished honey is sealed in the nest with beeswax, so that the naturally ripe honey is called "ripe honey", that is, sealing honey.

Because the ripening process is affected by factors such as climate humidity and short florescence, it takes a long time, or even can not be fully ripe, so bee farmers generally harvest before sealing, because the ripening process is longer, so bee farmers generally harvest earlier, and then use a concentrator to dehydrate by heating and pumping, so the honey after heat treatment is called 'concentrated honey'.

Honeybee farmers put the nest slices into a centrifuge to shake honey (Photo _ Cai Jiashan)

It should be clear that low-pressure concentration is to remove excess water, heating will increase dehydration efficiency but relatively destroy the enzymes in honey. This is the crux of the argument.

Therefore, the difference between capping honey and concentrated honey is that the former is bottled directly after collecting filtered impurities without any processing, because the enzyme is not destroyed, but the water content sometimes cannot be reduced to less than 20% due to weather factors. there is a risk of acid loss and bottle explosion when preserved at room temperature for a long time (can be solved by cold storage). The purpose of the latter concentration is to reduce the water content to less than 20% of the national standard, and the concentrated honey can be divided into heating and non-heating.

As the enzyme begins to be destroyed in large quantities above 60 degrees Celsius, the heating temperature of low-pressure heating concentration is generally set at 60 degrees Celsius, and some will be lower, which is heating concentrated honey.

At present, in order not to destroy the enzyme at all and keep the water below the standard, some bee farmers concentrate by reducing the boiling point of water to room temperature but not heating it at all, imitating natural air drying but shortening the duration by pumping air pressure. It is another compromise to preserve all the enzymes in honey (although some people question that decompression may also destroy enzymes).

Can we move towards room temperature (no heating at all) enrichment?

Low-pressure heating and concentration is not evil (it should be spurned by mixing flavors and syrup into fake honey). It is necessary in the honey market, just like processed food produced by large food factories in order to be mass-produced, transported, stored and sold on the shelves. Adding preservatives and many legal additives is necessary but permissible. It is up to the consumer to decide whether to accept it or not. after all, such goods are relatively cheap and easy to buy. For example, with the emergence of organic agriculture, habitual agriculture has not disappeared, but it has been adjusted for the better. Yimei pudding has been affirmed, and unified pudding is still popular in the market! The two are not a life-and-death chess game, but can co-exist and co-prosper.

The same is true of the honey market, the more yuan honey is produced, the more diversified the products are, which is a blessing for consumers. Bee farmers from the most difficult physical mite removal, only cover honey non-processing concentration to the traditional mass harvest and then low pressure and low temperature concentration, different products have different costs, as long as let consumers fully understand, set what they think is a reasonable price and consumers can accept it, there is nothing wrong with the honey market, why bother!

The last thing that comes to mind is that since everyone knows that honey enzymes are precious and there is so much energy for beekeeping in Taiwan, the enrichment equipment from low pressure to room temperature (no heating at all) is mature and not too expensive to afford. Why not move towards this goal? Although it will eventually be distinguished from cooked honey, at least it can be justified when it is emphasized that honey is soaked in cold water.

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