Emulsified Body Butter, a few questions.

[ohsoap]

Firstly I can smell my preservative threw my FO. I am wondering if this will smell will disappear, or if I should go with stronger FO's. I used Black Raspberry Vanilla FO and Optiphen Plus Preservative.

Secondly a friend of mine makes her whipped shea butter by putting it in the freezer after it has been blended to RT, and then blends more. (this is the method I used today with my emulsified butter, and it did not seem to change consistency at all)

I've been watching Tutorials online today, and it seems that the common way to do it is to freeze the oils till they start to solidify then whip them. I'm wondering if I even need to freeze an emulsified butter, or if my gf does it backwards...

:?

 

[IrishLass]

Is your GF making a regular (not emulsified), anhydrous whipped body butter with just oils and butter? If so, then many people make them that way (freezing the melted oils until solidified somewhat and then whipping). Perfectly normal for that kind of butter.

Emulsified body butter is a different beast, though. It contains water and emulsifiers and is made the same way as one would make lotion, i.e.- with a water phase and an oil phase, heating and holding the different phases to a certain temp, and then stickblending them together to form a cohesive emulsion (and adding a preservative). Different kind of butter/different kind of method.

As for your preservative, I can't really answer since I use a different preservative than you. Hopefully someone who uses or has used Optiphen Plus will chime in.

IrishLass

 

[ohsoap]

Awesome thanks! I'm going to try another batch, as my recipe came out quite a bit thicker than I had wanted and is a tad greasy. I guess I'll try another FO and see, I've only got the one preservative on hand.

I used 30% Shea, and 20% soft oils. Think I'm going to try dropping my shea % and adding more water.

 

[IrishLass]

Awesome thanks! I'm going to try another batch, as my recipe came out quite a bit thicker than I had wanted and is a tad greasy. I guess I'll try another FO and see, I've only got the one preservative on hand.

I used 30% Shea, and 20% soft oils. Think I'm going to try dropping my shea % and adding more water.

You're welcome.

Yes, dropping the shea down and adding more water will help it to be thinner. To make it less greasy, you can always add something like cyclomethicone. I find that it works quite well at cutting the greasies at only a small % of the total formula (counted as part of the oil phase).

IrishLass

 

[ohsoap]

It's about as thick as butter right now, lol. It's not super greasy, and I think that it will make an excellent winter leg cream.

I don't have any cyclo... I've read of using dryflo at .5% of the recipe and have some of that on hand so I've been deciding weather I am going to add that to the recipe, or if I want to try cetyl alcohol instead of steric. Any thoughts?

 

[IrishLass]

I've never used Dry Flo, but from what I understand it decreases the greasies and adds a nice slip to lotions and creams, etc... I've also read that if you add it at a temperature above 130 degreesF (55 degreesC) that it will thicken your product. If you don't have cyclo, Dry Flo looks to me like it would be a good sub, but you just want to make sure to add it to your emulsion when the temp is under 130 Degreesf or it will make your emulsified butter thicker.

I've never used stearic in lotion, but I use cetyl all the time as my thickener/stabilizer. When I first started making lotions I decided to go with cetyl instead of stearic because of all the testimonies I read that reported cetyl as being less waxy/draggy than stearic, and more emmollient or dewy in feel. Dewy and emmollient sounds a lot better to me than waxy/draggy, so cetyl became my go-to thickener. Although I can't make any personal comparison reports between cetyl and stearic, the cetyl feels nice to me- not waxy or draggy at all.

IrishLass

 

[ohsoap]

It looks like it's starting to sweat/separate now, gets a little more oily everyday. I think I'll have to try a different recipe all together this one is from (soaps and other obsessions) I did find that it isn't at all oily within a few minutes. It feels greasy going on, but sinks right in, so I'll keep the same combo of oils, just with reduced shea.
I do think that it is really draggy, so I'll try cetyl in the next batch. Wish me Luck!

 

[IrishLass]

Sounds like you need to increase your emulsifier %. Which one do you use?

IrishLass

 

[ohsoap]

I used e-wax, but the recipe only called for 6%, and it wasn't until after I made this batch that I read that it should be 25% of your total oils. Based on my recipe it should have had double the amount >< I guess I'm lucky that I'm only get a small bit of droplets!