What to record on a batch

If you make an acidified food this is not administration. It is the evidence that the batch met its process, and it is the first thing anyone asks for.

The record is made during, not after

Written at the bench as it happens. A record reconstructed that evening is a recollection, and the entries that matter most, times and temperatures, are exactly the ones memory gets wrong.

Keep the sheet in the room, on a clipboard, with a pen that works. The system fails on friction more than on principle.

What a batch record holds

Identification. Batch code, date, who made it.

Ingredients and lots. What went in and which supplier lot it came from. This is what turns a recall into a phone call to some customers rather than all of them.

Process. Cook temperature and time, when the acid went in, fill temperature, and the equilibrated pH with the time it was measured and the instrument used.

Yield and disposition. Bottles produced, bottles rejected, where they went.

The pH entry with its timestamp is the load-bearing one. A batch without it is a batch you cannot defend.

The batch code

It has to be on the bottle and it has to tie to the sheet. Anything unambiguous works; a date-based code is readable by you and opaque enough for a shelf.

Whatever scheme you use, do not restart it, do not reuse codes, and do not encode information you might want to change later.

Why it is the most valuable page in the business

It scopes a recall, which is the difference between pulling one batch and pulling a season. It lets you reproduce a batch that came out well. And it is the evidence that separates a good batch from a good batch you cannot prove.

Keep a retained bottle with the record. A sealed sample from the batch in question is worth more than any amount of reasoning about what probably happened.

References