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Coffee and tea
All Containers›Shop by use case›Coffee and tea›Growing the operation›Consistency at volumeShop all coffee and tea →
Growing the operation

Consistency at volume

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page7
A cafe builds its espresso around a specific coffee, which means drift is noticed within a day by somebody whose business depends on it.

Log the profile, follow the profile

The curve that actually ran, per batch, not the settings you dialed in. That is the only record that distinguishes a batch that drifted from one that was roasted differently, and it is what makes a roast reproducible by somebody who is not you.

Standardize the batch size

Half batches and full batches are different roasts on the same machine, and mixing them is a large and avoidable source of variation. Picking one size and sticking to it costs a little flexibility and buys a lot of consistency.

Plan for the lot running out

A single origin will end, and a wholesale customer who built a drink on it needs warning and a transition. Telling them a month ahead and offering something to taste is a different relationship from a delivery that suddenly tastes wrong.

Hold the blend, not the recipe

For a house blend the job is to keep the cup the same as its components change, which means adjusting proportions deliberately against a reference sample. A blend whose recipe never changes is a blend whose flavor does.

Taste every day, against something

A retained sample from the last good roast, tasted beside today’s. Daily cupping is the practice the industry built for exactly this, and the reason it is daily is that the drift is slow enough to miss any other way.

What a cafe will ask

Whether next month tastes like this month, and what happens when the lot runs out. Both are answered by records and by a plan rather than by reassurance, and having an answer is a genuine competitive advantage.

References

21 CFR 101, Food Labeling, which carries the general requirements that apply here in the absence of a standard of identity: the statement of identity, net quantity, ingredient list and the name and place of business of the responsible party. law.cornell.edu
Written from federal regulation and from the published physics and chemistry of staling, not from a laboratory. There is no standard of identity for coffee or tea, so most of what governs a product here is the general requirement that labels be truthful and claims be substantiated. Anything here is a starting point for a conversation with your state department of agriculture, not a determination that you comply.