Best Practices for Measuring the Color of Cocoa Powder

While cocoa powder isn't consumed on its own, it flavors and colors many chocolate-based recipes, from brownies to bundt cakes. To ensure their baked goods turn out the way they intend, consumers often judge cocoa powder based on its appearance alone — sometimes subconsciously — to determine its quality.

As a cocoa powder producer, your primary goal is to assure customers that your cocoa powder is the best choice for their recipes. One way to do that is by measuring the color of your cocoa powder at each stage.

Color Measurement to Determine Cocoa Bean Quality

Before cocoa powder becomes finely ground, the beans need to be appropriately fermented first. The beans are divided based on their color to assess the degree of fermentation. Fully fermented beans will be the desired brown color that everyone associates with cocoa powder. Inadequately fermented beans will range from partly brown and partly purple to fully purple and salty.

Measuring the color of your cocoa beans before they are ground into a powder can help you determine imperfections before the final product.

Understand the Importance of Cocoa Powder Color

Once the beans are ground, measure the color of the cocoa powder. Measuring color at this stage helps you see what your customers will see. When the cocoa is in bean form, cocoa powder color will:

• Determine final product color: Because of cocoa powder's rich hue, its color will show in the final baked goods. Keeping consistent with cocoa powder color standards ensures baked items turn out as desired.
• Reflect flavor quality: Even though cocoa powder isn't sold in white, dark, or milk chocolate varieties, a darker color will assume a richer flavor. A lighter purple color will likely give a more subtle taste.
• Influence consumer behavior: The color of your cocoa powder is one of the first sensory experiences your customer has with your product. Ensuring chromatic consistency helps encourage a purchase.

Measure the Color of Cocoa Powder Using the ColorFlex L2

Make the color measuring process much easier using a spectrophotometer like the ColorFlex L2. This smart device makes cocoa powder measurements simple, fast, practical, and objective — all while providing accurate color results comparable to human vision. 

As color measurement experts, HunterLab has developed the ColorFlex L2 for maximum versatility and ease of use. Innovative design makes this device ideal for measuring small particle samples, solving the challenges of measuring loose powders. This spectrophotometer drives value in any color workflow from day one, integrating quickly and easily into quality labs or on production floors. With keyboard and monitor compatibility, there's no need to connect an external PC for full functionality. Training is equally fast and simple, with a built-in setup wizard and intuitive operation.

ColorFlex L2 promotes higher efficiency and more accurate outcomes. It delivers insights into your cocoa powder's quality at every production stage, enabling you to identify and respond to any potential issues sooner to reduce waste. Plus, this spectrophotometer displays detailed color and spectral data in just minutes for fast, consistent production with fewer bottlenecks. We've included a highly precise internal camera that guides users in positioning the sample correctly to lessen the chance of erroneous measurements.

Quickly share the data you capture across devices, production lines, facilities, and process control systems since the ColorFlex L2 boasts both HDMI and USB connectivity and universal equipment compatibility. Real-time insights into product quality enable you to make informed decisions faster to prevent unnecessary downtime. You'll also benefit from one of the most robust built-in libraries of color scales and indices available, generous storage capacity, and custom tolerance capabilities.

Additional benefits of our revolutionary ColorFlex L2 model include a compact, space-saving design and our legendary HunterLab customer support.

Request a Quote for a ColorFlex L2 Spectrophotometer From HunterLab

For over 70 years, HunterLab has been designing and programming spectrophotometers to help food manufacturers everywhere reach quality and safety standards. Our equipment is the gold standard in objective, scientific color measurement for even the most challenging substrates.

Request a quote for the ColorFlex L2 or any of our other products today.