How to thin bulk lotion and conditioner bases

[deadken123]

Hey All-
I package lotion in 1oz PET bottles for a local hotel.But, my lotion and to certain extent conditioner bases, want pour out of the bottle.How can I thin the bases and not dilute the preservatives?

Thanks In Advance,Ken

 

[Cellador]

I'm not sure that you can...anything you add will need additional preservative. It's added to formulas as a percentage of the total ingredients. If you increase the formula amounts, you increase the percentage of preservative needed.

 

[cmzaha]

Many times the supplier will have the information of what you can use for additives in their lotion bases. Some bases can accept extracts but not all can.

You really cannot thin a base other than heating but you need to know the max temperatures of the preservative and manufacturers list ingredients not the preservative name or they may be mixing their own preservatives. Adding oils or liquids to a lotion is very risky. Thickness is controlled by the formula. Also, heating the base risks breaking the emulsion. Just use a lotion filling machine or a piping bag for filling your bottles.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Your supplier of the lotion/conditioner base should have that information for you on their site. If they don't, you might want to contact them directly -- Email, phone or online Chat.

Oops! Please ignore the following. See post #12 for an explanation:

Other than that, and generally speaking, you can add up to 10% (by weight) water or aloe vera juice (Walmart's has preservative in it -- 1 gallon jug at $7 the last time I checked.) Warm the jug of base for a few minutes in a hot water bath in the sink to get it moving. Warm the water or Aloe juice as well. This can be done in the microwave at 1/2 power, with 20 second bursts. To protect the preservative, keep the temps of each no higher than 100°F max.

Be sure to test how much liquid to add before diluting the whole gallon. For example (working in grams is easiest):
90 grams of warmed lotion + 10 grams (max) liquid = 100 grams finished lotion.
If that's too thin, work down from there.

NOTE: Allow to cool to room temp before capping to prevent condensation from forming inside the bottles.

TIP: Use a ZipLoc bag, snipped at one corner, to dispense into bottles.

HTH (Hope this helps) and good luck!

 

[deadken123]

Your supplier of the lotion/conditioner base should have that information for you on their site. If they don't, you might want to contact them directly -- Email, phone or online Chat.

Other than that, and generally speaking, you can add up to 10% (by weight) water or aloe vera juice (Walmart's has preservative in it -- 1 gallon jug at $7 the last time I checked.) Warm the jug of base for a few minutes in a hot water bath in the sink to get it moving. Warm the water or Aloe juice as well. This can be done in the microwave at 1/2 power, with 20 second bursts. To protect the preservative, keep the temps of each no higher than 100°F max.

Be sure to test how much liquid to add before diluting the whole gallon. For example (working in grams is easiest):
90 grams of warmed lotion + 10 grams (max) liquid = 100 grams finished lotion.
If that's too thin, work down from there.

NOTE: Allow to cool to room temp before capping to prevent condensation from forming inside the bottles.

TIP: Use a ZipLoc bag, snipped at one corner, to dispense into bottles.

HTH (Hope this helps) and good lu
Thanks for your info. I use these to fill bottles. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009LS6VOQ/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[SideDoorSoaps]

You could get the Malibu tottle bottles that squeeze and product gravitates down

 

[cmzaha]

No way would I add in 10% water, aloe or any other liquid. I have yet to see a base that recommends adding in water or aloe juice. I simply ask why risk it. If I did something like that I would recommend sending it out for a microbial testing. Why risk it...

 

[deadken123]

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[deadken123]

You could get the Malibu tottle bottles that squeeze and product gravitates down

How do you get the product into the bottle?

 

[deadken123]

No way would I add in 10% water, aloe or any other liquid. I have yet to see a base that recommends adding in water or aloe juice. I simply ask why risk it. If I did something like that I would recommend sending it out for a microbial testing. Why risk it...

The Hotel has had some complaints that the lotion is hard to get out of the bottle.

 

[IrishLass]

I'm with cmzaha (Carolyn) on this one. Better a lotion that is hard to get out of the bottle than a lotion that's not fully preserved because you added extra liquid to it that the preservative cannot handle. . There's no way I would ever add 10% of any liquid to a lotion base unless the supplier of your base can guarantee that adding that extra liquid will not overwhelm the efficacy of the preservative system. Skin infections are no laughing matter, and that is what you are risking and possibly exposing your customers to by thinning out your lotion base with extra liquid without knowing for sure from the manufacturer that it is safe to do so.

Instead of playing with fire by thinning it, I would change your packaging instead by using squeezable toggle bottles, as has been mentioned- the kind that sit upside down. Thick lotions dispense easily out of such bottles. That's the kind I use for my own thick lotion.

A good way to get thick lotions into a bottle is either by using a lotion filler instrument (they sell them at places like LotionCrafter) or else a piping bag, as cmzha (Carolyn) mentioned. Or you can do what I do (and which Zany mentioned) with my thick lotion that I make just for myself and family- I use a ZipLoc bag with a corner snipped out and pipe the lotion into the bottle through the snipped corner.


IrishLass

 

[Zany_in_CO]

No way would I add in 10% water, aloe or any other liquid. I have yet to see a base that recommends adding in water or aloe juice. I simply ask why risk it. If I did something like that I would recommend sending it out for a microbial testing. Why risk it...

I hear ya, Carolyn. Your point is well taken. As a matter of fact, I was just coming back on to delete the section following "generally speaking" due to the fact that someone who doesn't understand the basics of lotion making could quite easily compromise the preservative by adding too much water or overheat. But, trying to be "helpful", I was speaking from recent experience.

As it happens, before I retired last July from making GM lotion from scratch for a wholesale customer, they asked me to test some GM lotion bases for them so they could make it themselves. They are disabled and don't have the hand dexterity to feel confident about doing it from scratch.

We tested bases from a few different suppliers, all allowed the addition of water to thin the base if necessary and settled on this one from Nature's Garden. Scroll down to the 5th paragraph.

https://www.naturesgardencandles.com/natural-goats-milk-multi-base-lotion

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Instead of playing with fire by thinning it, I would change your packaging instead by using squeezable toggle bottles, as has been mentioned- the kind that sit upside down. Thick lotions dispense easily out of such bottles.

Good advice, as always, Irish. Unfortunately, Ken is using 1 oz. PET bottles that have little to no give to them.

I package lotion in 1oz PET bottles for a local hotel.But, my lotion and to certain extent conditioner bases, want (won't) pour out of the bottle.

I can relate to that problem when my wholesale customer chose a 4 oz. cobalt PET bottle for a "therapeutic" hand and body lotion. The lotion I made was considerably thinner than the GM lotion because it needed to pour out of that bottle. We also used a paraben-based preservative. Interestingly, not one customer objected to the use of parabens or even asked about it.

But that's a whole 'nuther discussion!

 

[cmzaha]

I read the instructions on NG site. There is still no way I would add 10% water to a lotion unless I added in another preservative to cover the product, especially a goat milk lotion that is one of the hardest to preserve. I do use Germall Plus at .5% with another preservative at full recommended usage. More than once I have had germall plus fail when used alone, when sent out for testing. These were lotions with high water but no proteins of any type. This is why I would be very skeptical of NG's suggestion. FYI, I have also had a couple of NG's lotion recipes fail. Sometimes I use a posted recipe to see how it is and if something I can tweak. I cannot do that often now being at my moms, taking care of her, but a few years ago I did a lot of testing.

If Ken is selling enough lotion, he might want to talk to Essentials by Catalina about their lotions or just switch to a different lotion. They do make lotions for Hotels, but I do imagine the runs are quite large, worth talking to them. EBC makes their own in house and have an in house chemist or chemists. With their bases I have never seen the allowance of adding water to thin lotion. They do add the percentages of fragrance and extracts that can be added.

Or Ken can change to squeezable 1 oz bottles. Wish he could use silver I have a case of silver squeeze that I would love to get rid of.....