The batch log, and the fields that matter
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The fields
- Batch code, and the date it was bottled.
- Supplier, their lot, and the pressing or harvest date of the oil.
- Date the bulk oil was received and how it was stored since.
- Infusion: what material, what weight, the acidification solution and ratio, the soak start and end, and who carried it out.
- Acid strength for a vinegar, with the method.
- Bottle and closure used, including whether it blocks light.
- Fill level or weight, so headspace is consistent.
- Yield in bottles, and where they went.
Why those three carry the property
The supplier lot and pressing date answer every rancidity question. The infusion method with its numbers answers the only safety question in the property. The acid strength answers the vinegar side outright. Everything else on the list is useful; those three are the ones a bad week turns on.
Record the method, not the intention
An entry saying the garlic was acidified is not a record. An entry naming the solution, the ratio, the start time and the end time is. The difference matters precisely when it matters most, which is when somebody who was not there is reading it.
Keep it longer than you think
A bottled oil can sit in somebody’s cupboard well past its date, and a vinegar effectively indefinitely. A log discarded at the end of a year is discarded exactly when the batches it covers start generating questions.
Then read it
The value is comparison across batches, which only happens if the fields stay the same and somebody looks. An afternoon lining the pressing dates up against the complaints is worth more than any single page here.
One more habit worth building: hold a bottle back from every batch, labeled with its code and stored the way a customer would store it. The log tells you what you did and the retained bottle tells you what happened to it, and on a product whose failure mode is slow those are different pieces of information. Open one at the date you printed, on a day when nothing is wrong.
Keep it where the bottling happens rather than on a computer in another room. A log that requires walking somewhere is a log filled in from memory at the end of the day, which records intentions rather than events.