Feeling quite in the dark? Probably a dark reddish. But it could also be Amber, or yellow, or a nice warm brown... Puns aside, the on thing all the products we've listed (and many others as well) have in common is a little known substance, yet one that, as we've seen, is widely used : Caramel Colour.

This product has its origins in the distant past, and is probably one of the first colouring matters ever developed. And for this reason it has a very respectable story, and a field of application which, as appears clearly by skimming the list we wrote above (and we kept it short, lest we bore you!) is extremely wide throughout the Food Industry (And others as well...)

But what is Caramel Colour ? Where does the colour we find in our beer can, and at the same time in the chips we have while watching a good movie on our sofa? We asked a company who's been in the market for almost fifty years : SICNA, who started from Italy and conquered wide slices of the vast world market for this product.

Well: Caramel Colour is essentially similar to the caramel that is sometimes prepared for decorating pastry and cakes, by melting sugar in a pot. In more scientific and precise terms, it is obtained by thermally treating carbohydrates (such as sugar, for example) in the presence of specific acids or salts. Sugar oxydation under these particular conditions produces a liquid concentrate, of slightly bitter taste and a typical smell of burnt sugar. And what's more, depending on specific treatment this concentrate may have a spectrum of colours ranging from olive to a full yellow, and the intermediate hues we mentioned before, like reds, browns, amber... Specific colour is so important that a precise referral tool for hues, the Linner index, was created to classify all the particular variations in colour that the finshed product may show.

But colour is most definitely not the only characteristic that the products of a Company like SICNA are classified by. Caramel is divided in three broad classes: Caramel Colour proper, which is used, as we saw, in fields ranging from brewing to soft drinks, “burnt sugar”, which is obtained by the transofrmation of saccarose alone, with no chemical additives, and is thus used in those applications where a final product with very specific characteristics is wanted, such as in the liquor industry, and Aromatic Caramel, which is the most similar to homemade caramel and is mostly used in the pastry and sweets industry, for garnishing.

And other uses, you say ? We mentioned mostly food, but don't think for a moment that this kind of product may stop at this application. In other fields, Caramel Colour finds application in Cosmetics, Pharmaceutical Industries... and even in the Building Industry!