# Xanthan gum-liquid soap



## Claudsoap

Does anyone have a great method with using xanthan gum to thicken their liquid soap? I've tried several times and I'm left with big jelly blobs.


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## DeeAnna

I don't use separate thickeners with my LS, but Faith Oriold has written some articles about her experiences with various thickeners for LS. If I remember correctly, she reports xanthan gum is tough to use and get good results. See http://alaiynab.blogspot.com/search/label/tutorial


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## dleight

*Glycerin!*

Glycerin is the magic answer to Xanthan Gum. I did a LOT of reading about this and it turns out that Xanthan gum starts to swell when it comes in contact with water. If you mix it with Glycerin or oil, that solves the big jelly blob mess. I've tried mixing it with Glycerin and no big jelly blob 

Read more here: http://curious-soapmaker.com/how-to-dissolve-xanthan-gum.html


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## DeeAnna

I'm not entirely convinced glycerin is the magic solution to using xanthan gum to thicken liquid soap. Did you read Evik's additional information in the comments?

"..I never had success with Xanthan gum in thickening liquid soap. It only gels in water, so it really depends how much of water your soap contains. Also – it is not that good in thickening high alkaline products,  it is incompatible with metal ions. Every time I finished having part of it sinked to the bottom…..."

And this --
"...thickening soap is very tricky. Xanthan gum won’t work, nor the corn starch and I believe nor the arabic gum...."


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## dleight

I did read those posts - everything is tricky with soap-making  So far I've had pretty good results but I've only used it a few times. It wasn't that great as an additive to liquid soap that I'd already diluted but it worked great in some body wash that I made but was too thin (castile soap + honey + grapeseed oil + vit E oil + essential oils). I'm trying it now in some liquid soap but before I dilute it. I'll see how that goes.


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## LaureLive

Hello , I agree with you that xanthan gum don’t work great with high Alkine solutions, but carbormer is great choice, in cosmetics , it is used for making jell and it requires alkine water to get hydrolyzed with water , they first add TEA (triethanolamin) or Naoh to water to make it alkaline and they add %0.5 carbormer of total formula and fix ... it also make clear gel not like xantum gum does ..


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