Cooling System Failure / Impact and Response
Quarantined
1 batch
Batch 50 — never shipped
Potential radius
5 batches
Stopped before Batch 51
Customer exposure
Zero
Contained pre-bottling
Response time
Same day
Last reversible point

Affected Batch

One batch was affected. Batch 50, a Seekers Mekong Dry Gin run produced on the 2000L still on 29 May 2023, failed QC and was quarantined. It never shipped. Post-incident analysis later confirmed a temperature drift of 1–2°C/hr, rising by approximately 24°C across the 12-hour run.

Blast Radius

At the point of containment, one batch had been produced out of a planned five. If production had continued, Batches 51 to 54 would have run under the same conditions. That would have consumed raw materials and reduced the time available for recovery before shipment. Containment kept the blast radius to one batch instead of five.

Containment Decision

By 10:30 AM on 12 June, the deviation had been confirmed as real and affecting the full batch, even though the root cause was still unknown. Batch 50 was still in tanks. Botanicals for Batch 51 had been staged and weighed, but not yet committed. No bottling, labelling, or outbound movement had occurred. Customer exposure was zero.

Decision
Pausing carried a bounded cost: one batch lost and less time to recover. Continuing carried an unbounded cost: each additional run added more compromised volume, with no guarantee the issue would be detected before repeating. I contained before the root cause was confirmed.

I locked the Batch 50 tanks, halted Batch 51 preparation, and discarded the staged botanicals because their usability window was short. That kept the issue to one batch at the last point where intervention was still possible.

Reversibility

All downstream steps were still reversible at the point of containment. No product had been bottled, labelled, or moved. Exposure remained zero. The only losses were one batch and the discarded botanicals staged for Batch 51.

Production restarted on the 300L legacy still on 13 June to protect the shipment timeline. The 2000L root cause was confirmed later, after shipment.