GRADING OF HONEY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18856, 8 May 1923, Page 8

GRADING OF HONEY

A CHEAPER APPARATUS. Mr R. Campbell, Director of Horticulture, has evolved, as the result of a few experiments, an apparatus which should save the department a good deal of money. Up to the present America has had to be sought to provide a Lewis honey grader, a stand holding seven phials of a solution, thickened to a consistency approaching that cf honey, and coloured according to the standard grades. Two of those are white, five are amber of a gradually deepening tint. The • first five only are m use in New Zealand, which does not produce the two lowest grades of honey. Those are “water wnite,” “white,” “amber,” “medium amber,” and “dark amber,” the last three corresponding to the American “extra, light,” “light,” and “dark." • Previously the department had tried grading from straps of coloured glass, but this complicated matter? and made the operation difficult. Then it sot out to try liquids and used first of all, oils, which, however, are affected by changes in temperature. Now Mr Campbell has hit on a plan of using olcohol (as a preservative), water and burnt sugar, the latter ingredient colouring the mixture to any degree of the amber tint required. A little glucose is being used experimentally to thicken the fluid. The little discovery should enable the department to manufacture at the cost of a few pence tubes which cost many shillings.