What Is the Best Way to Measure the Color of Colas?

What is the color of cola? Most consumers will say “brown” and be done with it, but as part of the industry that brings soft drinks to life, you know that the answer is a bit more complicated. Coloration comes from a combination of actual color and turbidity, or haze, which determines how clear the liquid is and how much color is actually perceived by the human eye.

Regardless of the color of your soda, having the proper equipment to measure it is essential in maintaining a consistent brand color. Discover the best way to measure your products and get started with HunterLab today.

Understanding Liquid Transparency

Measuring liquid colors may offer more of a challenge than doing the same for solid food. As a result, the process may require different equipment and measurement techniques. Liquid drinks like soda can be classified as:

• Opaque: Liquids with a high solid content that light cannot pass through.
• Translucent: Liquids with some solid content that still allows some light through. Most cola soft drinks fall into this category.
• Transparent: Liquids with little to no solid content that allow light through easily.

How Transparency Changes Color Measurement

When it comes to measuring the color of liquids, two methods stand out as the most useful:

• Transmittance: Transmittance solutions measure how much light moves through a liquid, which can help you determine how consumers will perceive a certain product on the shelves.
• Reflectance: Reflectance solutions perceive colors the way human eyes do. These tools can provide an accurate color measurement that most closely matches the way consumers will perceive your product in a store.

These methods are designed to encompass the color measurement of every type of liquid. For example, transparent liquids can only be measured through transmittance, while opaque liquids benefit from reflectance. When it comes to translucent liquid measurement, either method may be acceptable, depending on what the path length of your sample reveals:

• If you can see your thumb through the liquid at path length, use transmittance instrumentation.
• If you cannot see any details of your thumb at path length, use reflectance instrumentation.

Explore Soda Color Measurement Solutions With HunterLab

With the right equipment, such as the HunterLab Vista benchtop spectrophotometer, concise reflectance or transmittance measurements are achievable from everywhere. Measure color and haze simultaneously and get accurate results in seconds. Embedded technology makes it the ideal standalone tool, and with the potential for flow-through cell installation, you can make continuous measurements with every batch.

Revolutionize your color measurement tools and ensure a more consistent end product with HunterLab. Request a quote on Vista today.