Creating Recipes

This manual shows you how to create brew recipes with Cropster Cafe.

You need to have Cafe manager permissions to perform all the functions outlined in this article.

Demo video

This video outlines the onboarding steps as well as creating your first recipes and brews in Cropster Cafe. For more information on onboarding steps, check out Cropster Cafe's Getting Started manual.

Why use Recipes? 

Recipes allow you to store all of the information about how you brew a specific coffee for a specific brew method, and how this changes over time.

Note: A single recipe contains many different brews across multiple locations, users, and roast dates.  This allows you to easily compare how your coffee is being brewed over time across multiple teams, and locations. 

You can set one reference across multiple locations, or you can define a different set of reference parameters per location, or even per equipment station. Baristas always have the right recipe at hand for the coffees currently on your menu, and are able to log any changes required to achieve optimal results.

Customizing recipe parameters

As a Cafe Manager, you are able to choose which parameters per brewing method you want to capture. The parameters can be set in the Cafe Settings. These parameters will apply to all recipes and for your whole team.

Creating recipes

Recipes are a collection of brew parameters that the team in the cafe uses to brew a certain coffee. 

Recipe status

A recipe can have one of three statuses:

  • A draft recipe is only visible to Cafe managers and a reference can be set, but is not required. A draft recipe can be activated.
  • An active recipe requires a reference, and it will be available on the Cafe dashboard. An active recipe can be archived, but it cannot go back into draft mode.  
  • An archived recipe is not visible on the Cafe dashboard. However, the recipe and its brews are still accessible to Cafe managers from the Recipes overview page. An archived recipe can be activated to become an active recipe again.

Adding a new recipe

To add a new recipe, follow the steps outlined below:

  1. Log in to our online platform C-sar
  2. Navigate to Cafe to get to the Cafe dashboard, then click the + Add new recipe button to create a new recipe. 
  3. Now you can start filling in the Recipe description: 
    • Recipe status: Choose if you are creating a Draft or an Active recipe.
      An active recipe will be available on the Cafe dashboard for all baristas as soon as a reference is set to one or multiple location(s). A draft can only be seen by the users with Cafe manager permissions via the Cafe dashboard, or the Recipes overview page.
    • Recipe name: Give your recipe a name.
    • Brewing method: Choose a brewing method for your recipe. If you choose Manual brew, you can also choose a Brewing device for your recipe
    • Country of origin: Choose one or multiple origins for your coffee.
    • Variety: Choose one or multiple varieties for your coffee.
    • Processing method: Choose one or multiple processing methods for your coffee.
    • Recipe comment: For additional information.
  4. When you are ready, click the Next button to add brews.

Adding brews

After having defined the recipe's description, you must add brew parameters to then log test, or reference brews.

  1. Select the Brew location and Station.
    You will need to select a station if there are multiple stations available within the Cafe location.
  2. You can update the Roast and Roast date here if you're using a different one. The Roast date is automatically filled in if you link the Roast ID-tag.
    If your company uses Cropster Roast and you know the ID-tag of the roast, you can link it. This will connect the brews with the particular roast batch. It can be updated per brew, no need to create a separate recipe. 
    If you do not have a Cropster Roast subscription, fill in your own identifier for the roast batch you are using, and click the Add "[roast identifier]" option.

  3. Log the rest of the brew parameters.
    If you need to change the weight unit for a certain parameter (e.g. Dose, Yield), simply tap the unit to select the new unit from the drop-down menu.

  4. Add a Brew comment to log any extra information here that should be connected to your brew.
  5. You can log as Test or as Reference to save your brew in the Brew log. You can add as many brews as you would like.
    Learn about Logging Reference or Test brews.
  6. You can also promote a brew in the Brew log to be the reference by clicking the star icon in the Reference column.

  7. Once you are done adding brews, you can click the Create recipe button.
    1. A draft recipe needs at least one brew.
    2. An active recipe needs a reference brew.
  8. The Locations modal will open up, where you can assign your reference to one or multiple locations (or stations if you use them). This will be the initial set of parameters for the recipe, which can later be updated.

  9. Click the Save & Create Recipe button.

Learn about Managing recipes.

Congratulations! You are now ready to create Recipes.

Thank you for being a Cropster customer! If you have feedback, questions, or concerns, please feel free to reach out by submitting a support ticket directly from support.cropster.com.

We design and make alterations to our software based on user feedback, so we look forward to seeing what you have to say!