Sacks, stock and conservation¶
Artisan does / TilauScope adds
Artisan does — nothing here. Green coffee inventory and its keeping condition are outside Artisan's scope entirely.
TilauScope adds — a guided way to bring a new bag into the catalogue, physical labels that identify a bag and can move between bags as they empty, and a water activity dashboard that says which bags need attention before they spoil.
This chapter covers the + New sack assistant, sack labels and how they are managed, and the Storage tab in BeanCave. Printing a label physically, and scanning one to open a record, are covered in the next chapter — this one covers what a sack label is and what it tracks.
Bringing a new bag in: the "+ New sack" assistant¶
+ New sack, next to the catalogue's other actions, opens a short wizard for the three situations a new bag actually represents: a coffee never seen before, more of a coffee already on the shelf, or the same coffee's next harvest.
Start. Either paste a supplier page URL and let AI fill in what it can, or go step by step by hand. The AI path lands on the same review screen as the manual one — it is a head start, not a shortcut that skips checking.
Note
The AI option needs an AI provider configured first — see Configuration. Without one, the card is present but disabled.
What kind of bag is this. The question is asked outright, not guessed from the name:
| Choice | What it asks for | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| A new bean | Name, origin, harvest year, starting weight | A new coffee record is created. |
| Restock — same crop | Which existing coffee, added weight | The weight is added to that coffee's stock. Nothing else changes. |
| New crop of the same bean | Which existing coffee, new harvest year, starting weight | A new coffee record is created, copied from the previous crop's details, so only what actually changed for the new harvest needs re-entering. |
Weight can be typed in or captured live from a paired scale, the same way it is throughout TilauScope.
Restock and new-crop skip straight past provenance, characteristics and sensory notes to the review screen — a restock has nothing new to describe, and a new crop mostly carries the last one's details forward.
Sack identification is the one step that can always be skipped. Give the bag a label id now — recycled ids are offered first, then ever-printed-but-unused ones — or leave it and attach a label later. A duplicate id is flagged before it can be reused by two bags at once.
Provenance, characteristics, sensory notes — the same fields as the bean record itself, including water activity, skipped for restock and new-crop as above.
Review closes the loop: one card per section, each with its own ✎ Edit to jump back without restarting, and a warning if a starting weight of 0 g is about to be confirmed. ✓ Create the sack writes the record and, if a label id was chosen, marks it assigned.
Sack labels¶
A sack label is an id — printed on a small physical label, stuck to a bag — that lets a bag be identified at a glance or by a scan. It carries no information of its own beyond the id; what it points to is whichever coffee record currently holds it.
Attaching and releasing. Every place a coffee's sacks are shown — the bean record, the Storage tab — shows them as small removable chips. Removing one asks Is this bag empty? first, unless that confirmation has been dismissed permanently, and returns the id to circulation rather than deleting it.
Assigning a label from the Storage tab. The Storage tab's per-coffee panel offers + Assign, picking from currently available ids — recycled first — rather than typing one in freely, so a typo can never attach an id no printed label actually carries.
When a bag empties. The moment a coffee's stock reaches 0 g while it still holds a label, TilauScope asks whether to keep the label attached or release it for reuse. Bags that reach zero without going through that prompt are not lost track of: the Storage tab keeps a standing notice of any label still attached to a coffee with no stock left, with one place to review and release them in bulk.
The label pool. Behind the scenes, labels are tracked as a pool: printed and assigned, printed and never assigned, or released and available again. New ids are handed out in sequence; released and unused ids are always offered first before a new one is minted, so the id space does not grow faster than the bags actually on the shelf.
Note
Printing sack labels — a batch of new ids, a reprint, or registering an externally-printed one — and scanning one back open, are covered in Labels and QR, from the same tool this section's ids come from.
The Storage tab¶
BeanCave → Storage is a dashboard over every coffee currently in stock, sorted so the one needing attention soonest is at the top.
The bean list¶
Each row shows stock remaining, attached sacks, current water activity, conditioning, and a moisture trend indicator. Coffees are ordered by risk: mould risk first, then watch, then too dry, then optimal, then unknown.
Water activity zones¶
Water activity is read against four bands:
| Band | Range | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Too dry | below 0.45 | More fragile aromatics, faster staling. |
| Optimal | 0.45 – 0.60 | Normal safe keeping range. |
| Watch | 0.60 – 0.65 | Worth checking again soon. |
| Mould risk | 0.65 and above | Recondition or roast as a priority; aim to bring storage humidity below 60% RH. |
Conditioning and moisture trend¶
Conditioning — set per coffee from a short list (vacuum-sealed, valve bag, sealed jar, open cloth bag, and so on) — decides how a coffee's moisture is expected to move. A sealed bag is read as holding its own water activity regardless of the room; an open bag, or a coffee with no conditioning set, is read as drifting toward the room's humidity, and the trend indicator (gaining moisture / drying out / stable) follows that comparison.
Note
A coffee with no conditioning recorded is treated as an open bag for this comparison, on purpose — a silent "unknown" would hide a real drift rather than flag one.
The panel also states a rough equilibrium moisture content for the current room conditions — a guide to what an open bag is drifting toward, not a calibrated reading of the bean itself.
Measuring water activity¶
💧 Measure aw on a coffee's panel opens its characteristics for editing, water activity field included. With an AquaGauge probe paired, a floating reading window appears alongside it — click the live value to drop it straight into the field.
Storage-room humidity¶
A banner at the top of the tab shows the storage room's own humidity and temperature, where configured. This reading comes from a network broker rather than a paired probe directly — ⚙ configure sets which topic and value to read it from.
Hardware — storage-room humidity
Any sensor able to publish its readings to the same network broker TilauScope already uses can feed this banner — a TilauAmbient unit set up for the purpose, or another MQTT-capable humidity sensor. It is independent of the ambient probe paired for roast day, which is not read here.
Next¶
- Printing and scanning sack, bean and roast labels: see Labels and QR.
- The bean record these bags belong to: see BeanCave.
- Any unfamiliar term: see the Glossary.