Is there white foam on the surface of honey?

Honey is a very common thing in our lives. Many people usually have the habit of drinking honey water. But sometimes when people drink honey, they find some white foam on the surface of honey. Many people worry that this is the honey fermentation and deterioration. In fact, it is normal to have white foam on the surface of honey. You don’t have to worry too much. Honey with white foam is actually better honey and you can drink it with confidence.

1. There are 4-7 kinds of proteins in honey, which usually exist in the form of colloidal substances. They are plasmids between molecules and suspended particles in honey that cannot be removed by filtration. The content of this colloidal substance in light-colored honey is 0.2%, and in dark-colored honey it is about 1%. It has a certain influence on the color and turbidity of honey, and can cause the honey to bubble, thus affecting the commercial quality of honey.

2. Unprocessed high-grade honey has strong antibacterial properties. It is generally believed that the reason for the antibacterial effect of honey is that in addition to the fact that honey is a high-concentration sugar solution and has a low pH value that can inhibit the growth and development of microorganisms, more importantly, the antibacterial substance hydrogen peroxide produced by the glucose in honey under the action of glucose oxidase. Hydrogen peroxide easily decomposes into oxygen at high temperatures, resulting in a layer of white bubbles on the surface of the honey.

This also causes the real unprocessed honey to expand in the summer. When purchasing honey, buyers mainly fill 80% of the container to prevent the honey from overflowing when it expands.

Therefore, when the real unprocessed honey is shaken in the summer, there will be a lot of bubbles in the honey, which will make the honey easily overflow from the honey bottle and form a layer of white bubbles on the surface of the honey. But after leaving it alone for a few hours, the bubbles will disappear automatically, but gas will rush out when you open the honey bottle (even honey at room temperature, the highest temperature of 43 degrees, will have very obvious bubbles when shaken). However, this phenomenon will disappear as soon as the temperature drops in autumn.

This is different from the fermentation of honey: fermented honey has bubbles, a strong smell of alcohol and a pungent odor! It's also quite simple in winter: you can stir the honey 10-20 times with chopsticks, and then let it sit for a while, there will be bubbles on the surface of pure natural honey.

So, is the more honey the better? If there is only a small amount of foam (very fine) floating on the surface, it may be the foam produced when the honey is shaken, also called honey sand, which is edible; if there is a large amount of foam and it smells pungent and sour, do not eat it, because the honey has fermented and deteriorated. This situation may also occur because the temperature is too high in the summer, and the honey concentration is not high enough, so it is easy to deteriorate. Therefore, when you buy honey in the future, you must buy honey with less water content and higher purity. In the hot weather in summer, it is recommended to refrigerate the honey.

Theoretically, it is possible to prevent bubbles from forming in honey. Generally, honey manufacturers use concentrators to remove moisture from honey and heat it to above 60 degrees to kill active enzymes. This way, the honey will appear thick and without bubbles, but the nutritional components of the honey are destroyed. There is another kind of honey that does not have white bubbles, which is the so-called "honey" mixed with white sugar or fructose.

Generally speaking, the foam is most abundant one month after the new honey is taken out, at the turn of spring and summer every year. Some honeys are as foamy as beer in early summer and are edible and taste like marshmallows.

Honey with bubbles is a clear indication that it is natural honey, whereas processed honey does not have any bubbles at all. Honey with bubbles and alcohol taste is enough to prove that it is watery honey and spoiled honey.