Dynamic method to characterize rehydration of powdered cocoa beverage: Influence of sugar nature, quantity and size

Powdered cocoa beverages are a class of instant foods that contain cocoa powder often mixed with high quantities of sugar. One of the desirable functional properties of these beverages is their aptitude to rehydration. Unfortunately, cocoa is a poorly dispersible powder and this is one of the reasons why sugar is added to the initial mix. The influence of sugar nature (sucrose or lactose), sugar size (30 or 480 μm) and sugar percentage (from 70 to 90%) on the rehydration properties at 20 °C are investigated. Two techniques were tested and compared: classical static (Standards) and dynamic (Quicpic Analyser). It was concluded that the static method usually used for milk powder can correctly discriminate the influence of sugar nature and sugar percentage. The dynamic method was found to be an interesting complementary tool and allow a better sensibility than the static one. In addition, this dynamic method may be of interest to industrialists. Both, the possibility to obtain kinetics and “in situ” images of particles during rehydration are strongly interesting to interpret size changes.