Phycocyanin explained: grades, stability, dosing and price
What phycocyanin is, what the E18 and E40 grades mean, where it holds and where it breaks, how it is dosed in beverages, supplements and cosmetics, and what it costs per kilo.
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What the data sheet does not have room for.
Stability, formulation, regulation and process. Written for the person who has to make it work, with the conditions attached to every number.
Phycocyanin in powdered drink mixes and dry blends: dose for the glass, not the powder
Dry is the safest place to keep phycocyanin, and the drink is made in someone else's kitchen with their water, their temperature and your acid. How much colour a stick needs, where the pH is decided, why a hot drink is a heat step, and the starting doses for three formats.
Read it →Galdieria vs spirulina phycocyanin: why one holds in acid and what that means for a buyer
Both blues are C-phycocyanin. The one from the red alga Galdieria sulphuraria comes from organisms that live at pH 0 to 5, and the data on it shows no precipitation at pH 2.7. Spirulina phycocyanin agglomerates in the same conditions. What the evidence says, where it is thin, and how to choose a blue for an acid product today.
Read it →Phycocyanin in frostings, icings and fillings: dissolve it first, add it after the oven
A frosting is mostly sugar with little free water, made cold and after the bake, which suits a protein pigment. What the fat does to the shade, why royal icing needs its pH checked, where a baked filling stops working, and the doses to start a bench trial at.
Read it →Natural blue in the US: where the FDA dye phase-out stands and what spirulina extract is allowed in
The FDA moved its target for the six petroleum-based dyes to the end of 2027 and it is still voluntary. Blue No. 1 is still listed. Spirulina extract is exempt from certification under 21 CFR 73.530, its expansion to foods generally is on hold, and the category list you can use today is the old one. What that means for a formulator, with the Federal Register citations.
Read it →Spirulina extract in the EU: colouring food, E numbers and where it can be used
Spirulina blue has no E number in Europe, and that is the framework working as designed rather than a gap in it. What separates a colouring food from a food colour, how the enrichment factor is calculated, who carries the burden of proof, and what to have in the file before a blue product launches.
Read it →What you pay for in a kilo of phycocyanin
A listing at 70 dollars and a quote at 180 dollars are not the same product priced differently. How to compare them: price per colour unit, cost per kilo of finished product, and what has to be on the certificate before either number means anything.
Read it →Blue spirulina vs spirulina extract: what a pouch, a bag and a drum actually contain
The same molecule is sold as a superfood in a 30 g pouch, as a colouring food in a 25 kg bag and as a pharmaceutical reagent in a vial, at prices a hundredfold apart. Here is what changes between them, why the pouch says nothing about the bag, and what the retail surveys found in the pouch.
Read it →How to buy phycocyanin: nine questions a supplier should be able to answer on paper
Spirulina is grown in open ponds, traded through several hands and sold on a code that says nothing about what is in the bag. The contamination surveys, the numbers that belong on a certificate, and the questions that separate an extractor from a reseller.
Read it →Natural blues compared: spirulina, jagua, gardenia and butterfly pea, on the numbers
There are four natural blues a formulator can buy today. Each fails somewhere. Here is where, with the published half lives, pH windows and light data side by side, and the honest answer on which one to pick for which product.
Read it →Phycocyanin as a supplement active: what the human trials show, and what a label can say
Spirulina has 35 randomised trials behind it and phycocyanin is the molecule most of them credit. The meta-analyses, with their effect sizes and their GRADE ratings, the gap between spirulina biomass and a purified active, and the claims that survive a regulator in the EU and the US.
Read it →Phycocyanin on skin: what the cell data supports and what it does not
The blue protein is sold to cosmetic formulators on antioxidant and photoprotective claims. Here is what the keratinocyte and fibroblast studies actually measured, the one result that should make you check your supplier's purity, and the line between a claim you can defend and one you cannot.
Read it →Phycocyanin grades: what E18, E40 and the purity ratio actually measure
Two numbers describe every phycocyanin on the market and most buyers read only one. The colour value says how much blue a gram delivers. The purity ratio says how much of the powder is the protein. Here is what each is, how it is measured, and which one to buy on.
Read it →Phycocyanin in yogurt and ice cream: fat, pH, storage
Phycocyanin in yogurt and ice cream: milk protein protects it, fat lightens it, fermentation sets the pH and the freezer holds the blue for six months.
Read it →Phycocyanin in gummies: dose, pectin, sugar and the deposit temperature
A gummy is acid, sugar and a hot deposit in one product, which is every phycocyanin stress at once. Why pectin beats gelatin for this pigment, what the sugar is doing for you, and the numbers we run the starter formula at.
Read it →Phycocyanin and light: why the blue fades in a clear bottle and what to do about it
Heat is the fast way to lose phycocyanin. Light is the slow one, and it is the one that shows up after launch. The photodegradation data, what it means for packaging, and the two formulation levers that actually move the number.
Read it →Phycocyanin in ready to drink beverages: the pasteurisation step, minute by minute
The blue survives 72 °C for 15 seconds and dies at 80 °C in ten minutes. That gap is the whole design problem of a ready to drink beverage. The kinetics, the order of addition, the matrix choices that buy margin, and the formula we run at 1.2 g per litre.
Read it →Replacing Brilliant Blue FCF (E133) with spirulina extract: what changes in the formula
A synthetic dye works at parts per million and shrugs off heat. Phycocyanin is a protein. Swapping one for the other changes the dose, the shade, the process window and the label, and here is each of those with numbers.
Read it →Phycocyanin stability at low pH: what actually breaks the blue
Acid gets the blame for phycocyanin failing in beverages. The kinetics say the protein is more stable at pH 5 than at pH 7, and that temperature moves the number far more than pH does.
Read it →Reading is cheaper than a failed trial.
Every grade ships a free sample sized to run the test yourself, with the certificate of analysis for the lot you receive.