What a batch day actually looks like

A batch is two hundred jars. It takes roughly nine hours, and almost none of that is the part people imagine.

The butters are melted low and slow — too hot and the shea grains when it sets, which is a texture fault you cannot whip out afterwards. Cooling takes the longest and cannot be rushed with a fridge, because fast cooling does the same thing as overheating, just from the other direction.

The whipping is about twenty minutes in three passes, with a rest between each so the butter can firm slightly. That is what gets air through it rather than just stirring it.

Filling is by hand, by weight, one jar at a time. Labelling is by hand. The batch number and the fill date go on the base with a stamp.

Then the jars sit for forty-eight hours before anything ships, because the whip continues to set and a jar boxed too early arrives collapsed.