Why does honey turn sour?

Honey is a very suitable food for human consumption, which can bring a lot of benefits to the human body. However, since there are many types of honey and the consumption channels are not fixed, some people find that honey becomes sour after buying it, which makes consumers dare not eat it blindly. In fact, honey becomes sour usually because of fermentation. So what is the matter with honey becoming sour?

First, why does honey turn sour? The sugar content in honey accounts for about 70%-80% of honey, so the taste of honey is very sweet, and its sweetness is greater than that of white sugar. But why does some honey turn sour? There may be two reasons. The first is the taste of special honey; the second is the taste of honey after it goes bad.

Second, the main component of honey is sugar, but it is not only sugar. It also contains citric acid, malic acid and other sour substances. If all the sugar in honey is removed, the taste of honey will be similar to vinegar, but the strong sweetness of honey masks the sour taste of honey. One of the quality indicators of honey is acidity. Some honey varieties have higher acidity and you can taste the sourness, but the sourness is very light and not easy to detect. Of all the honey varieties I have tasted, only the wild honey harvested once a year has a sour taste. It tastes very good. I wonder if it is because the bees collect nectar from special plants.

Why does honey turn sour? Honey is said to be a food that will not spoil, but the actual situation is far from that. In real life, we often see honey fermenting and spoiling. The fermented and spoiled honey is contaminated by yeast and decomposed into acetic acid, alcohol and water. Therefore, the fermented honey will also turn sour, but it is fundamentally different from the sour honey mentioned above. One is normal sourness, and the other is abnormal sourness. How to distinguish the sourness of these two types of honey? It's very simple. The normal sour taste of honey is a pleasant taste, such as citric acid and malic acid, and the honey itself will not have any other physical changes. However, the abnormal sour honey will have a corrupt sour taste and the taste of alcohol, and will produce a lot of bubbles, and the honey will become very thin. So these two situations are still easy to judge.