Effects of additives on orange EO scent retention

[linne1gi]

@linne1gi and @dibbles

Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. The soap made without an additive smells just like the others, except that the soap made with the calendula powder also smells a little like straw.

@Peachy Clean Soap my orange EO is 6x from Camden Grey in Florida.

Wow, that’s great. I had 2 soaps that I experimented with last year. I added Blood Orange essential oil to both, but kaolin clay to one (I marinated the essential oil in the clay for about an hour - usually I like to marinate overnight). The one that was marinated with the clay smelled great 6 weeks later and the soap with no clay had literally no scent 6 weeks later.

 

[dibbles]

@linne1gi and @dibbles

Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. The soap made without an additive smells just like the others, except that the soap made with the calendula powder also smells a little like straw.

So, it would seem, then, that the jury is still out on whether or not the additives actually help. I have some calendula powder to use in a soap with my home grown calendula petals and infused oil, so good to know about the straw smell. I'll have to pick something to compliment that.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

So, it would seem, then, that the jury is still out on whether or not the additives actually help. I have some calendula powder to use in a soap with my home grown calendula petals and infused oil, so good to know about the straw smell. I'll have to pick something to compliment that.

For my soaps, we won’t know until the orange scent is gone. When I decided to use only 3% it seemed like a high bar to set for an orange eo. So far, so good.

I’ve used calendula petals before and never noticed a scent. Don’t forget that for this round of testing, the additives ended up at 4 tsp ppo, plus the petals were blitzed in a food processor and were fairly fine.

@linne1gi I haven’t used blood orange eo, but haven’t had any luck with straight orange eo hanging around.

 

[dibbles]

@Mobjack Bay - I haven't noticed a smell with calendula petals either. I was referring to the calendula powder, which I haven't used before but plan to add to at least part of my batch. When I get around to making it. The oil has been infusing for a month now, so it's ready when I am.

edit: I went back and read and what you are calling calendula powder in post #20 is ground calendula petals. I think the powder I have is made from the whole flower, not just the petals. But you did also mention a slight straw smell in that one.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

@Mobjack Bay - I haven't noticed a smell with calendula petals either. I was referring to the calendula powder, which I haven't used before but plan to add to at least part of my batch. When I get around to making it. The oil has been infusing for a month now, so it's ready when I am.

edit: I went back and read and what you are calling calendula powder in post #20 is ground calendula petals. I think the powder I have is made from the whole flower, not just the petals. But you did also mention a slight straw smell in that one.

I have a bag of petals, a bag of dried flowers and I’m pretty sure I still have a container of the powder I made from calendula petals. I guess a sniff test of those is on my list of to-dos! I only use the whole dried flowers when I’m making infused oil for balms.

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

@linne1gi and @dibbles

Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. The soap made without an additive smells just like the others, except that the soap made with the calendula powder also smells a little like straw.

@Peachy Clean Soap my orange EO is 6x from Camden Grey in Florida.

Ok thx for your Info.

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

Wow, that’s great. I had 2 soaps that I experimented with last year. I added Blood Orange essential oil to both, but kaolin clay to one (I marinated the essential oil in the clay for about an hour - usually I like to marinate overnight). The one that was marinated with the clay smelled great 6 weeks later and the soap with no clay had literally no scent 6 weeks later.

Wow' gotta try your magic bullet

 

[dibbles]

I have a bag of petals, a bag of dried flowers and I’m pretty sure I still have a container of the powder I made from calendula petals. I guess a sniff test of those is on my list of to-dos! I only use the whole dried flowers when I’m making infused oil for balms.

Sorry to add to your to do list

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Update on the soaps (made on January 4, 2021): After multiple rounds of sniffing, I am possibly/wishfully detecting a very faint orange scent in all of them, including the one with no additives. My second tester thinks they smell like wax, except for the one with calendula powder, which she thinks smells like an old attic! I did not share with her that the base hard fat is tallow. On a more positve note, the colors all look good and there’s no sign of DOS in any of them.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I’m back with a 1-year update on these soaps. When I took them out of storage a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t convince myself that I could smell any orange at all, so I decided I would do a quick lather test. I promptly got distracted and just lathered up today. The best news of all is that I can smell orange in all of them. It’s light, but it’s there. I’m not noticing big differences in lathering among the soaps based on the powdery additives (@ 4 tsp ppo) or in comparison with the soap that has no additives. All but two of them feel smooth in the hand when lathering up. The one with the calendula powder feels a little textured but in a nice way. The one with the French green clay feels a tiny bit scratchy. I’ve never used that much green clay in a soap before and would not go that high in a future soap based on this test soap. There’s also no sign of DOS in any of the soaps. I don’t have my notes handy, but it’s likely that I likely used citric acid as a chelator.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Here are the soaps at the two year mark. They don’t smell like orange, but they don’t smell bad either. There’s no DOS apparent on any of them, which is good to know because the additives were at a whopping 4 tsp. ppo. I just washed my hands with them and all are still making nice lather. The soap with cornstarch, second row in the center, has stayed the whitest to my eye.

 

[linne1gi]

Thank you for sharing. I have been adding a little corn starch to my soaps. I think it slows trace a little.

 

[Blufuz]

Really nice experiment! But maybe you could have seen quicker results by using actually less strong EO?

I recently used up a bottle of Sweet Orange EO in several different soaps, and by chance noticed that the one whose fragrance actually lingered was when I added 10 ml dark tea EO and 15 ml sweet orange EO to this recipe:
https://www.humblebeeandme.com/lots-lots-clay-soap/I used French green clay, at 25% the weight of the oils. I added first the clay at trace, then quickly the EO before it became solid on my spatula!

It smelled really nice at least up to 2 months after I made it, and the scent even lingered on my hands after washing! I gave the rest away so I don’t know how it will do after that…

It’s true that the bars came out a bit scratchy, but for me that’s a feature since it makes them easier to handle. It also produced a nice creamy lather.