Calculating How Much a Recipe Will Make

[sandman_max]

I'm a newbie to all of this and my brain is about to short-circuit.... I have a lotion recipe I want to try. When I add up the weight of all the ingredients, it comes out to 100 gr. If I convert 100gr to ounces, that's 4 oz. But everything my cooking experience has taught me says that liquid ounces (volume) are not the same thing as ounces by weight. So how do I figure out how many jars something is going to make?

 

[IrishLass]

What I do (and pretty much all the lotionmakers I know as well) is to first formulate your recipe so that each individual ingredient is based on a % amount instead of a weight or volume amount, and when you total up each individual %, your total batch equals 100%. Then from there you can adjust your recipe to any size batch you like by multiplying the % of each individual ingredient by what you want your total batch size to be.

I hope that I made sense and didn't confuse you more. If you're blowing another cicuit, (don't worry- I've been there, too ), here is a really good tutorial to help you get it all figured out. Swift's site is awesome:

http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com/2 ... tions.html


HTH!
IrishLass

 

[ToniD]

The only time my products by weight have not fit in the same size by volumn container is when I make a whipped butter.....

HTH!

 

[sandman_max]

No, I get the percentage part and I can figure out how much of each ingredient to use for a given batch size. What I can't figure out is how many containers 100 gr (or 200 gr or whatever) is going to make. Or if I only have 4 containers (let's say 8 oz jars), how much should the total batch size be. Because 8 oz is a liquid measure and 100 gr is weight measure.

 

[Lindy]

8 ounce can also be a weight.....

 

[Sunny]

The best thing to do is just make a sample batch and increase the size as needed. Start with a 100 or 200 gram batch (if your scale is accurate enough) and go from there. A 100 gram batch of lotion is going to make about a 4 ounce container of lotion. It depends on how whipped, thick, or runny it is. Just try it out and see. If you whip the crap out of it, it may need more room. 100 grams is not really much of a loss if it doesn't turn out the way you wished, considering most of that weight is water anyway.