The measurement of wort and beer color has traditionally been performed using single wavelength spectroscopic methods. Specifically, American Society of Brewing Chemist (ASBC) methodology uses the absorbance at 430 nanometers (nm) to calculate beer color results. While this standard method has utility for color measurement of light-colored wort and beer, a method using tristimulus color measurement offers more information about more highly-colored matrices. Putting this method to work as a quality assurance tool requires careful consideration of sample handling and interpretation of the results. Previous collaborative studies showed variable results in wort samples that point to sample stability problems. In this work, tristimulus results for wort samples collected and analyzed within 24 hours, 4 days at room temperature and 8 days in cold storage are compared. These results show significant shifts in tristimulus values illustrating the need for a minimal sample holding time for obtaining reliable results. Further, while raw tristimulus results have value in describing color or color differences, the CIE L*, a*, b* results can be difficult to interpret, especially in a quality assurance application. To aid in the interpretation, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been applied to determine what the underlying latent structures were for wort tristimulus data. These results showed that for this sample set, the first principal component explained over 95% of the variability observed in the data and the addition of the second component explained virtually all of what remained. Examples will be presented that show how the use of PCA uncovered differences in wort color that common statistical process control charts did not show. Lastly, tristimulus and standard color data will be compared and contrasted for wort and corresponding packaged beer.