Metrics for Consistency

[shareadram]

All - curious what methods you use to maintain consistency when you have a product you want to keep replicating it. We make a cinnamon whiskey using a high quality cinnamon however, since it's an agricultural product, each batch varies slightly. We typically get it to our sweet spot with post batch tweaks but would like to see if anyone has thoughts, comments, suggestions or experience with this. 

[FIVE x 5 Consulting]

At the craft level, you kind of have to accept whatever variation is going to come with your agricultural ingredients.  This is one of the reasons that flavor extracts are popular - consistency.

If you have expertise and cash, you can do like big gin producers, and perform lab analysis of your botanical batches and standardize your botanical loading that way.  SImplified example: if the essential oil level in your newly-purchased lot of cinnamon decreases compared to your control batch, you know to put proportionally more cinnamon in your spirit to acheive the same flavor density.  You have to have a good, repeatable protocol to analyze the key constitutents of your botanicals for this to work.  Definitely beyond my expertise!