I wonder if/how you would do any kind of continuous testing with food/aromatic products like this. Have a taste panel on site? Do some basic go/no go tests for what, pH, viscosity, gas chromatograph (lol?).
The Sriracha company doesn't try too hard to make each batch identical from their FAQ - just the variation in chiles alone make that impossible except within a 55 gallon mix, it sounds like it would not be possible without using a lot of additional ingredients to smooth out the flavor between batches like companies do with orange juice.
They don't make identical batches, most of the chiles they get come from 1 time of the year.
They preblend a 55 gallon mix (Its their chile paste you can buy at the grocery store) and use that production stock for the rest of the year. They add some additives / flavors etc to make the actual srircha afterwards. Srircha only carries 3 products, chile paste, chile paste with garlic, and srircha.
Factory tour was worth it, I had to plan a month in advance but it was really cool to see. Especially how many 55 gallon jugs they store in their warehouse.
I don't know what the exact testing method they used for quality control, that part of factory was off limits and they didn't explain it either
I guess at some point you just trust the ingredients and process? I’m all for variability, it makes life interesting. But if your responsibility it to make sure that everyone buying Sriracha gets what they paid for, what do you do? 55 gallons is a lot of sauce, but if you empty 300 times that into clear plastic bottles every day, that’s a lot of taste testing.
Statistical process control is really fascinating stuff. You have to test often enough to have reasonable confidence, but not so much that you waste time and energy.
There's an interesting video with Alan Alda showing how McCormick calibrated pepper heat in the... late 80s? early 90s? https://youtu.be/Hd_mxyMAJJY?t=215
Just inside of Europe the taste difference is super obvious. E.g. it's clearly sweeter in Sweden than Germany. That could just be a difference in carbonation though.
Also, for the zero calorie drinks the sweeteners used vary.
A can of coke is the same everywhere. Fountain cola varies wildly since restaurants use different levels of carbonation, syrup and freshness. McDonalds fountain coke is the best.
Between countries, a can of Coca Cola varies[1], particularly in the amount of sugar[2], as well as the type (HFCS in the US, cane or beet sugar in most other places).
Well ackshully, It's getting popular in America to get "Mexican Coke" (which is bottled, not canned so your point can still stand) because it can use cane sugar instead of HFCS:
Hard to put test points on a jar of sauce.