Tips for buying honey

Fantastic tips for buying quality pure or raw honey and how to tell the difference! You might think it’s easy to find, but it’s not. The honey available in many shops leaves a lot to be desired. Therefore, a few tips are essential in order to buy the quality honey we want. However, the best solution is to buy it in specialised shops or from reliable beekeepers. Moreover, it is worth buying quality honey in order to take advantage of all the benefits of this fantastic product that nature gives us.

Summary: We, at El Cortijuelo de San Benito in Las Rozas de Madrid offer you a wide variety of honeys. Honeys like; orange blossom honey, heather honey, thyme, lavender,  rosemary, acacia, linden, rape, chestnut… In addition to advice on how to buy honey, you can also taste them and receive information on their origins, flavours, pairings, etc.

1. Where to buy pure honey in Madrid?

In Madrid you can buy honey in any supermarket or grocery shop. However, quality raw or pure honey is not easy to find. It is difficult to find quality honey in large supermarkets. Most of the honey they sell has been pasteurised and if not, it has undergone a further manipulation process. Moreover, in these places you will not find advice on how to buy honey, as you will find in specialised shops.

In gourmet shops you will find quality honeys. If what we want to buy is a specific monofloral honey, we have no choice but to look for other specialised honey shops. One of the most important is El Cortijuelo de San Benito. We also have: La Casa de la Miel, La mielería, El Colmenero, Moderna Apicultura…

a) It’s worth buying cheap honey

There is a great disparity in prices and quality in large supermarkets, in small gourmet shops and on the Internet. Observing these price disparities, the easiest thing to think would be that the higher the price, the higher the quality, or that because of the large volumes that the large supermarkets buy, they obtain a product of the same quality but at much lower prices.

However, if we think about it a little more, or if we have bought different brands of honey at different prices, we will have discovered the different qualities that exist and that in many brands, we buy more image than product.

From this article we want to expose a series of points to take into account before buying a honey.

b) The consistency of the honey:

If we buy a honey, which is always liquid and when winter comes, it does not crystallize either, we find a low quality honey, but if your honey is crystallized and solid, this is a clue that the honey is of quality.

Quality honey tends to crystallize and solidify. This is because the glucose molecules contained in honey tend to form crystals, as this is their lower energy state. A honey that does not crystallize, has been pasteurized and therefore subjected to high temperatures. Pasteurization manages to break down glucose molecules so that they do not crystallize, a process by which the aroma of honey and many of its properties are lost.

We have to take into account that honey with less glucose and darker than heather and forest honey takes a long time to crystallize, and these may not crystallize during the time we consume them. Honey such as rosemary honey, lavender and orange blossom are honeys that crystallize quite quickly, which often, especially in winter we are already solidified.

c) Honey should not be heated above 40°C:

Honey is ideal for breakfast on toast and sweeten tea or milk. It is also widely used for baking and other cooking dishes. Ideally, it should not be subjected to temperatures above 40 °C, as some of the beneficial components of honey, such as its enzymes, degrade at high temperatures. However, even if we subject it to high temperatures, it is always better to take honey than other sugars or sweeteners

tips for buying

Photo 1: Our shop specializing in olive oil and honey

2. Buy pure honey online and other tips for buying honey.

To buy pure and raw honey online there are a wide variety of companies and individuals that offer their products.. In Spain we have also a great variety of online stores, which we can multiply if we focus on each country, as beekeeping is found in all countries of the world.

The convenience of shopping online is that they take it home and if the order exceeds a certain amount, you are usually not charged for postage.

In the case of El Cortijuelo de San Benito, we send us anywhere:

1. mainland Spain
2. Balearic Islands we do not charge shipping costs from 70 €.
3. Outside Spain, depending on the distance we charge 15, 20 or 25 euros plus VAT.

In short, all of them are intereting tips for buying honey of high quality.

Source:

Tips for buying honey Healthy with honey