Citric Acid Questions

[bbr]

I had to buy some emergency citric acid for my shows this weekend, which means that I had to buy what I could get my hands on.

Lately I've been using Milliard Citric Acid, and it seems to have a pretty small crystal structure. Well, this new stuff, from Spicy World, has a longer crystalline structure.

I made two identical batches of bombs last night. The first with the usual recipe and the second with the Spicy World CA.

Let's just say that the second batch did not go well. It was a huge struggle to get things to stick.

So, my question is, if I whizzed the Spicy World CA in my food processor to break these crystals up, would I have better luck getting my bombs to stick?

 

[bbr]

Ok, well, I tried it. Whizzing the CA in my food processor. Now I'm not entirely sure that was my problem.

The first batch of it I made was a regular small batch. Everything came together like a champ! So, it worked.

The second batch I made, immediately after, seriously, without hesitation I went into the second batch. That one was a failure. The only difference this time was that I had doubled my batch.

Also in this CA experiment I had weighed all ingredients, because, lets face it, there's variance with volumetric measurements. Well, I'm wondering if something happened when I doubled the batch.

At any rate, I'm going to have a lot of bath soak, instead of bombs. Nothing about this batch stuck.

:-?

 

[penelopejane]

Ok, well, I tried it. Whizzing the CA in my food processor. Now I'm not entirely sure that was my problem.

The first batch of it I made was a regular small batch. Everything came together like a champ! So, it worked.

The second batch I made, immediately after, seriously, without hesitation I went into the second batch. That one was a failure. The only difference this time was that I had doubled my batch.

Also in this CA experiment I had weighed all ingredients, because, lets face it, there's variance witch volumetric measurements. Well, I'm wondering if something happened when I doubled the batch.

At any rate, I'm going to have a lot of bath soak, instead of bombs. Nothing about this batch stuck.

:-?

Scaling up sometimes doesn't work.
My dh is a paint chemist and they often had to reformulate to scale up.

Wish I could help you more but I don't make them.

 

[bbr]

Scaling up sometimes doesn't work.
My dh is a paint chemist and they often had to reformulate to scale up.

Wish I could help you more but I don't make them.

Yeah, I have a feeling that's what it might be. I wonder if I made a regular batch of just one color for all the colors if that would get me to where I need to be.

 

[Dahila]

I never go over 1500 g a batch, it is easy to make another one, that amount of powders give me some time to work with it, I only spray when I have like 5 bombs left the batch gives me about 20 2' bb

 

[bathgeek]

I find my bath bombs tend to fail when I try to make larger batches. I’ve resigned myself to single batches.

 

[PuddinAndPeanuts]

I suspect an ounce of citric acid before reducing particle size and an ounce after reducing particle size aren’t quite the same thing- seems logical that they’ll require different amounts of moisture in the batch.

When doubling batches, small problems seem to become amplified. Try increasing in half batch increments

 

[bbr]

I suspect an ounce of citric acid before reducing particle size and an ounce after reducing particle size aren’t quite the same thing- seems logical that they’ll require different amounts of moisture in the batch.

When doubling batches, small problems seem to become amplified. Try increasing in half batch increments

But this was the batch that I weighed everything out in grams. Both the first and the second batch which I just doubled the recipe for.

It stands to reason, that if the first batch called for 50g, that the second would call for 100, and so long as all the ratios are scaled equally, wouldn't I yield the same outcome?

I would love to know what people who make large batches do, because as it stands, 1 batch only yields 8 bombs for me.

 

[penelopejane]

But this was the batch that I weighed everything out in grams. Both the first and the second batch which I just doubled the recipe for.

It stands to reason, that if the first batch called for 50g, that the second would call for 100, and so long as all the ratios are scaled equally, wouldn't I yield the same outcome?

I would love to know what people who make large batches do, because as it stands, 1 batch only yields 8 bombs for me.

This might not work because the ingredients dry out quicker than they should or a certain reaction doesn't work properly or a tiny bit more than the recipe calls for actually changes the whole thing. See my post on your other thread.