What you have to write down
Updated
More records than most food crafts, because two thresholds have to be evidenced and one of them is evidenced after the product has left.
Four record sets
Batch records, one per batch.
Raw material records: supplier, lot, specification, certificate of analysis.
Monitoring records, if you operate under HACCP, for every critical control point on every batch.
The threshold file, which is specific to this property.
The batch record
Batch code and date. Every raw material with its lot. Water treatment. Extraction time and temperature. Starting and finishing Brix and pH. Fermentation start, temperature and duration, where relevant. Treatment time and temperature, where relevant. Carbonation. Fill level and fill weight. Units filled, rejected and where they went.
The batch code goes on the bottle, or none of this connects to a product in somebody's hand.
The threshold file
The one that answers a regulator.
For the juice line: your exemption basis or your HACCP plan, the validation of the 5-log step, and the monitoring records that show it was achieved batch by batch.
For the alcohol line: the laboratory results on warm retained samples at end of shelf life, with the method, the laboratory, the sample storage conditions and the date.
That second one is the evidence that your product stays under 0.5 percent rather than starts under it, and it is the thing nobody has when they are asked.
Plus the pressure results from the same retains.
The retrieval test
Take a bottle with a code on it. How long to produce the batch record, the lots, the process figures, the treatment monitoring, the alcohol result for that formula and the list of who received the batch?
Under an hour is a working system. Run it on a quiet afternoon rather than on the day it matters.