Spanish latte batch base (cold service)
Applies to: the prepared sweetened-milk base for COLD Spanish latte service only. Hot service never uses this base — it is built à la minute per the Spanish latte SOP. This is fresh dairy held above its serving temperature while it is worked, so it is treated as a control point, not as a syrup.
Target: the batch is prepped ahead of service, not during it. Discard and hold limits below are absolute.
- Sweetened condensed milk — 740 g, weighed.
- Full-fat milk — 3 L.
- A sanitised, sealable container sized to take the full batch with headroom for mixing.
- A label and a marker at the prep bench before you start — not after.
- A scale, zeroed.
- Weigh the sweetened condensed milk into the container.
- 740 g on a scale. Condensed milk is weighed, never poured or counted in cans — a part-drained can is not a known quantity.
- Add the full-fat milk and stir until the condensed milk is completely dispersed, with nothing sitting on the base of the container.
- 3 L, giving the locked 740 g to 3 L ratio. Undispersed base at the bottom means the first cups pour thin and the last pour cloying.
- Seal the container and label it before it goes anywhere near the fridge.
- Product name, production date and time, discard date and time, and the initials of whoever made it. An unlabelled container is discarded and the discard is logged — there is no path where it is served.
- Refrigerate sealed until service.
- 48 hours maximum from production, then discard. This is the owner's operating limit for this base, not a regulatory threshold — check your own municipality's requirement, which may be shorter.
- During service, return the container to refrigeration between uses. Track its time out.
- 2 hours maximum out of refrigeration, cumulative across the shift. At 2 hours it is discarded immediately — it is not returned to the fridge to be used later.
- LABEL — no label, no service. Discard it and log the discard. A container someone is sure they made this morning is not a labelled container.
- 48 HOURS — from production, not from opening. Cold service stops when the base runs out or the clock does, whichever comes first.
- 2 HOURS OUT — cumulative, not per trip. Once it has spent two hours out of the fridge across the shift it is finished, and returning it to the cold does not restart the clock.
- SEPARATION — this base is for cold service only. If you find it being steamed for a hot drink, the hot SOP is being ignored and the drink is out of standard.
The 740 g to 3 L ratio, the 48-hour refrigerated hold and the 2-hour working window are all the owner's own operating limits, authored from professional practice. They are deliberately NOT presented as a regulatory threshold: no authority is cited for them because none was consulted, and a figure that carries an authority's name must be traceable to that authority's own document. Confirm the exact hold times your municipality requires for prepared dairy — they may be shorter than these, and where they are, theirs govern.