Lotion Too Thick

[HorseCreek]

Anyone want to help troubleshoot?
I want to make a more fluid lotion, one that you can get out of a Boston round without having to bang it on a counter. The recipe I have tried so far is
70% distilled water
10% GM
2% butter ( tried cocoa and then mango)
10% liquid oils
4% BTMS-50
3% stearic acid/tried cetyl alcohol today with minor improvement
1% preservative

I've used various liquid oils, doesn't make any difference. Is it because I'm using a butter?
The lotion itself is really nice! Soaks in nicely, not greasy, etc. I just don't want to be tied down to only using tottles or pumps for packaging. Why can't I get it more fluid? (Not talking milk, just easier to move up to the cap to get out) Thoughts?

 

[new12soap]

My suggestion would be to use shea butter, it is much softer than cocoa butter, use lighter liquid oils such as sweet almond or apricot kernel and stay away from heavier oils like olive, with only 12% oils I think you can cut your btms back to 3%, yes use cetyl instead of stearic and that could be cut back to 2% as well. Put the remainder in the water.

HTH

 

[DeeAnna]

I can appreciate N12S's point about switching lighter oils, but if you have chosen certain oils and butters for specific benefits, subbing them out for others may not meet your goals. So that may or may not be an option for your recipe.

Lower melt point butters -- Shea, babassu, coconut oil. Or go down to 1% butter if you want to use the higher melt point butters.

A 25% emulsifier to oil phase (fats + thickener) is a good starting point when developing a recipe, but many of my lotions contain less than that and stay reliably emulsified. I agree with N12S -- try less emulsifier and less thickener in proportion to your other ingredients.

You can also just proportionally reduce the amounts of the fats, emulsifier, and thickener and increase the water to make a lotion that contains more water. Most of my lotions for face and body use are 75% to 78% water. Once the lotion hits about 80%, it can be a little too light for my taste. The recipes that are closer to 70% end up with more of a cream texture. IMO that's texture is nice for spot application -- a hand cream for example -- but is not so good for overall or face use.

Don't change too many things at one time, however, or you can go from too thick to too thin without learning why. (Don't ask me how I know this!)

 

[Dahila]

Lately instead of butters I started to use babbasu oil, and it works beautifully, you lotion should be soft anyway, you have 80% of liquid.Lotion like that should go nicely into pump bottles
BTMS and stearic makes lotion thick and a bit dry. New12Soap is right about switching the oils around. Lately I become a fun of calendula infused sunflower oil for face lotions. It goes right into it) I prefer to use Polawax for that.

 

[HorseCreek]

I'm already at 80% liquid, so I can't help but think it's something other than that. My liquid oils are mainly apricot kernel and some jojoba, a smidgen of avocado, a smidge of castor ( I know is thick, but I really like castor it soaks in so well) some sunflower etc. When I switched from the stearic to the cetyl alcohol yesterday, it did help some but not enough. I guess I'll try the shea, I really love mango though, lol.
Is it possible my problem is the btms-50?
And just to further troubleshoot, scented or unscented, it doesn't matter, it's all the same consistency.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...I'm already at 80% liquid..."

Point taken, but keep in mind that's not all water -- the GM has protein and fat that could modify the skin feel of a lotion in a way that water won't. The "problem" is most likely the relative proportions of your ingredients, not the BTMS 50, in and of itself. Try 1% less of the BTMS and of the thickener and see if that helps.

 

[Obsidian]

The few times I used coco butter, my lotion was really thick. I would first try lowering the coco butter to 1% and making up the other 1% with a light oil like avocado.

This is the recipe I use. Its thickness is directlly related to what kind of butter I use. Coco make a very thick cream, shea makes a nice rich cream and mango made a really nice light but still thick lotion. I usually switch up the kind of liquid oils I use. My last batch was mango and avocado, its super nice.

67% water
3% glycerin
13% oils
5 % butter
3 % stearic acid
5 % ewax
1% fragrance
1% preservative
2% dimethicone

 

[HorseCreek]

Thank you all for the suggestions Deanna you are probably right with the milk composition. Milk fat alone is around 4% of the milk amount. I'm going to try lowering the btms-50 and city and see what I get. Might try another batch with the shea and see what happens also. Thanks a bunch!

 

[judymoody]

I'd cut back on the stearic by 1% I'd also try a different butter or no butter at all. I was in a single oil lotion swap and the butter-based ones were incredibly waxy. Cocoa butter was the worst.

 

[HorseCreek]

Lotion Too Thick - Update with more attempts

Ok, I made several more batches today. The problem is.. the lotion is really nice, I just can't get it out of the bottles! Still! So, I lowered the Cetyl Alcohol and BTMS-50 by 1% each, added that into the oils. I also subbed Shea for the Mango butter. I then made a batch where I took the Shea out completely and added in Glycerin in it's place (so, added another 1% to the liquids essentially.)
I still have thick lotion. Here is the last recipe I tried except take the shea out and put glycerin in it's place:

Ingredient %
Distilled Water 70
Goat Milk 10
Apricot Kernel Oil 3
Avocado Oil 3
Sunflower Oil 2
Jojoba Oil 2
Hemp Seed Oil 1
Castor Oil 1
Shea Butter 1
BTMS-50 3
Cetyl Alcohol 2
Germaben II 1
Vitamin E 1

Here is a (very bad) picture of what I'm referring to... it's gloppy when it cools has no fluidity to it. When it's bottled, you have to bang the lotion to the top of the bottle to get it to come out. Is this just how lotion looks/acts, or should it be easier to get out of a bottle? This photo was taken around 105 F, obviously it's thinner when it's warmer.


If I could find 8oz tottles that weren't white or just the tubes that you can get lotion in at the store, I'd be ok with that. I just can't find the bottle I want! Would it come out of a cosmo oval better than a boston round? The rounds I have are stiff, so you can't really help it along by squeezing much.

 

[Obsidian]

even my lighter lotion doesn't do well in bottles. Instead, I use tubs.

 

[DeeAnna]

Okay, so now I'm catching on -- you're concerned that your lotion is not flowable at room temperature. That's a whole 'nother ball game.

Most of my lotions do not flow freely at room temp, and if you look at commercial lotions, I think you'll find many of them do not flow freely either.

I can pour most of my lotions into containers if the lotion temp is 100 to 110 deg F. If the lotion cools more than that, I generally cannot pour the product. In that case, I put the product in a plastic bag, cut off one corner of the bag, and pipe the lotion into the containers. If I was making more than hobbyist amounts, I'd invest in a bottle filling machine.

Yes, this kind of product can be dispensed from a "boston round" or other type of firm-sided bottle IF you use pumps designed for high viscosity products, not the regular "watery viscosity" pumps. An alternative container is the "tottle" (tube-bottle, aka Malibu bottle) that is a squeeze type bottle that stores cap down, so the product is ready to squeeze out immediately.

If you absolutely must have a lotion that flows at room temperature, then you're going to have to increase the water content of your recipe. I'd be looking at a light lotion type of recipe with about 85% water. I'd also eliminate the hard butters -- you can't afford to include any ingredient that is going to work against the issue of maintaining flowability.

edit:
High viscosity pumps (lotion pumps):
https://www.thesage.com/catalog/products/High-Viscosity-Pumps.html
http://www.sks-bottle.com/340c/fin115a.html

Tottles (Malibu bottles, lotion bottles, etc.): http://www.sks-bottle.com/340c/fin109a.html

 

[HorseCreek]

Well, at least I'm not an utter failure! Lol. I guess I'm just going to have to have smaller tottles and larger sizes with pumps. Now to settle on a recipe and test. Thank you guys for all your help! It's much much appreciated. And when I go to formulate my next project (heavy creams) I'm already ahead of the game, lol.

 

[Dahila]

Most people have problem with separation not to thick lotion. I use polawax and cetyl and some silicone for facial lotion and it is very light. I have to admit that I love the way your lotion looks. I would not mind it in the jars. Can you pack it into jars? I know is not professional but it could solve the problem.

 

[Obsidian]

I use plastic tubs if I'm giving the lotion as gifts but for family and myself, I like using pretty glass canning jars. I like the shallow wide mouth ones. Found this image on google, they are half pints.