When stock goes off
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What the published causes say about storage
Two of the published failure modes happen after the jar is sealed and in a box, which makes storage part of the process rather than something that happens afterwards. A batch can be made correctly and still be ruined on a shelf.
| Failure | Storage cause given |
|---|---|
| Syneresis, or weeping | Storage place too warm, or temperature fluctuated |
| Darker than normal color | Stored too long, or at too high a temperature |
| Mold or fermentation | Improper storage |
Fluctuation, not just heat
Steady warm is less damaging than swinging between warm and cold, which is the opposite of what people assume and the reason a garage is a worse store than a consistently mild cupboard.
Temperature movement is named as a cause in its own right. A case that spends its days in a hot vehicle and its nights in a cool store is being damaged by the cycle rather than by the peak, which is a thing to know before a summer of markets.
What to do about it
None of this needs equipment. It needs choosing the right room and then not moving stock around, which costs nothing and is mostly a matter of deciding once. Pick the most boring room in the building, put the cases on a shelf rather than the floor, and leave them there. A store that is convenient to reach is usually a store with a door to the outside and a temperature that follows it. The inconvenient cupboard is the better one.
- Store cool, dry and dark, which is the published instruction and also the cheapest intervention available.
- Do not carry more stock to a market than you expect to sell, because the return journey is part of the product's life.
- Rotate. Oldest out first, which needs a lot code to be possible.
- Record where a batch went, so a complaint can be traced to a route rather than to a recipe.
The diagnostic that comes free
If every jar in a batch has the fault, it is the recipe. If some do, it is where they have been. That split is only available if you wrote down which jars went where.