Nettle & Comfrey Infused Oils - ok to use in HP?

[Seawolfe]

I am making a Genny's shampoo bar this weekend, and I am infusing the olive oil with powdered comfrey leaves and the avocado oil with powdered nettle leaves as we speak.

Is it ok to HP my soap using these infused oils? Or will it corrupt the pretty green color to baby poop brown or something? I'd like pretty green bars.

I also have some green French clay - but I dont want my shampoo bars to be drying. Is there an amount of clay that will add color but not be drying? Or is that just silly talk?

 

[FlybyStardancer]

No answers for you, but I'll be watching with interest. I'd like to know if it'd be a good idea for me to hp my own olive oil, that will be infused with calendula, chamomile, and lemon.

 

[new12soap]

You can use infused oils in soaps, but whether you HP or CP it the color doesn't really survive well. There are a handful of exceptions, like annato seed, someone else will chime in here on botanicals you can use for color. Unfortunately it is very unlikely that any of the properties you are trying to infuse into the oils will survive saponification, either. Again, HP or CP doesn't matter. Those are usually most effective in a leave-on product like a balm.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Something must survive, if a lot of soapmakers are doing infusions. And then there's also the power of the placebo.

Not to mention we're both asking about shampoo bars, which don't have a lot of leave-in options the way you would find for skin products, at least if you're wanting them to be synthetic- and preservative-free. I'm currently using a detangler spray, but the recipe creates way more than I can use before it goes bad (and it would be hard to scale down further), not to mention it's a huge pain to actually apply to my hair. Hence why I'd like it if my shampoo could replace it.

 

[green soap]

I also think something must survive. Not all the oil is saponified, and also, only triglycerides saponify, most herbal compounds are not triglycerides. Essential oils seem to survive saponification to some extent, and depending on the CP soaping conditions.

Another factor is that lotion usually stays on our skin until the next shower, but shampoo is not in contact with the hair for that long.

My Genny shampoo bars have infused rosemary, calendula, nettles (depending on which version) and I love them. Is it the placebo effect? would the oil combination give me the same results if I skipped my infusions? I don't know.

I we assume we get some benefits - just wanted to mention that in order to extract the most out herbs the infusions should be cooler for a longer time. So by doing HP you might expose the infused oil to a bit more heat than optimum. Why not do room temperature CP? Or add your infused herbs as superfat in HP after the soap is done and has partially cooled?

Sturdier herbs like rosemary can take a bit more heat but keep under 170F. I keep my infused calendula under 120F if possible. I's say nettles and comfrey somewhere in between. I am on the fence about the comfrey (need to do more reading) so I have not done that one yet.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

That's similar to my thinking, regarding what does and does not survive, green soap. The lye seems to have a preference for the saponifiable fatty acids (and citric acid, if that's present). Otherwise EOs and FOs wouldn't survive, PT and oatmeal wouldn't be so widely reported as helpful to troubled skin... There are more-or-less natural colorants that survive (alkanet, annato, tumeric, paprika, madder root, indigo, etc). Now, we may not know whether everything survives, or how much of what gets infused stays, but there does seem to be some varying level of survival.

So, a room temp infusion for a few days to a week does better than shorter warm infusion? I was thinking of warming up the oils at the very least to give it a kick-start, if not do a warm infusion. I'm not sure I have the patience at this point to wait a week for herbs to infuse, and then several more weeks for the shampoo bar to cure! And as for myself and adding the infused oil as a superfat... In my recipe, that's one of the fats that I could care less about how much survives as superfat, but unfortnuately, it's also one of the few where the portion is large enough to even do an infusion. My recipes tend to be very small.

 

[judymoody]

To answer your question, I have used nettle and comfrey-infused oils in CP soap and the result is a nice soft green. To minimize color loss, maybe use these as your superfat oils and add at the end of cook?

 

[green soap]

You can warm it up much higher than room temperature. I have used a double boiler with mason jars, or the same mason jars in a 170F oven for two hours. You will certainly get the color the same way. I do it this way if it is just for color.

In the summer I place my infusion outside inside a Garcia bear canister for a couple of days, depending on how hot it gets. I was thinking that a food dehydrator might also work and give better temperature control in the 120-150F range.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Seawolfe is concerned with color... All of my herbs for infusion will give it more of a yellow-y brown color (not to mention browning from honey), so I'm not as concerned with maintaining color.

My options for heating up oils are limited to stovetop (either in a water bath, or a double boiler), slow cooker (water bath style), or heating the oil up in the microwave before pouring it over the herbs.

 

[Seawolfe]

Ok status report.

I used Olive oil that was infused with rosemary for about a month, and then last night I mixed in 1.5 Tbsp comfrey leaf powder to about 11 ounces rosemary infused olive oil. I then added 1.5 Tbsp nettle leaf powder to about 8 ounces of avocado oil. This is roughly 1 Tbsp per cup of oils in the whole recipe. Both were in jars in a heated water bath in the crockpot. I ran the crockpot on low for about 1 hour and then turned it off and let them cool down overnight.

This morning the oils were very dark green, and I strained them out. Interesting to note that the powder had settled to the bottom so that straining was pretty easy.

I'd added tussah silk and 1 Tbsp sugar to the lye water. The sugar would NOT dissolve - looked like a supersaturated solution, and Genny's recipe does use a leetle less water (35%) that I usually use, so I added 1 Tbsp of water and then most of the sugar dissolved. What didn't I strained out.

I HP'd this and there were no surprises. After the cook I added 1 oz of salt, and put in a new bowl and stir stir stirred to cool before I added the EOs (litsea, tangerine 5x and rosemary 1:1:1). Then it started to firm up in earnest and I stuffed it in my new 2lb mold.

The green has stuck pretty well to here, its basically guacamole colored, which Im ok with. And it did smell pretty herbaceous before I added the EO's I could smell the comfrey and rosemary a little bit still.

Wow poorly lit and blurry pics - sorry about that. One isnt rotated right - just tilt your head

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Love that green!

I'm probably going to get my infusion started tonight, so long as my lemon zest has finished drying out. Last time it only took a day to dry out (thankfully, since the next day I used it in a gift mix that was being gifted that evening!). The other herbs were bought dry, but the lemon zest is from lemons I picked myself.

 

[Seawolfe]

Lol I have piles of lemon and orange zest lying about in various stages of drying. How do you use yours?

 

[FlybyStardancer]

I used my microplane to remove all of the zest, and then just dumped/spread it out on some waxed paper on top of a baking sheet. Then the baking sheet went on top of my fridge.

 

[judymoody]

Looks nice! Just the color I'd imagined.

 

[Seawolfe]

Ok final cut pics. The green has mellowed to a mottled sage, and the soap smells heavenly. I think my 1 inch bars are way too big for my taste, so I've cut them all in half. The last thick bar got cut into 3 columns that I quite for hand fittingness. I cant wait to try these!

I think next time I would go 2 Tbsp per cup of oil (so 6 tbs in my batch that takes ~ 3 cups of oil) on that overnight infusion after an hour or so in a crockpot bath.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Very pretty! My oil is infusing now... I tried measuring the herbs out by weight, but the calendula being so light made that impossible. LOL And I ended up with so much chamomile/calendula/lemon in there that I had to add more olive oil than my recipe plan calls for in order to cover it...

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I am interested in using a nettle infused oil post cook in HP - anyone have hints on the ratios when using fresh nettle? I could just shove a load in some oil (which is how The Admirable Lady operates) but I am more of planner...............

 

[godschild]

This may seem like a stupid question, but what is the 1oz salt for at the end? I've used salt and sugar in my lye water for added hardness and bubbles. Is this what you use it for? If so, I didn't know it could be added at the end. I'm asking because my next step in soaping is making salt bars.

 

[Seawolfe]

All my salt bars have the 80% salt added after trace, right before pouring.
I added the salt to this bar only because I knew Id be using it with a lot of distilled water (on ships) and wanted to compensate for that. No idea if that was even a good idea, but it hasn't hurt the soap.
LOL turns out actual salt bars are awesome for use at sea as well, makes the water not so unminerally

 

[Seawolfe]

I am interested in using a nettle infused oil post cook in HP - anyone have hints on the ratios when using fresh nettle? I could just shove a load in some oil (which is how The Admirable Lady operates) but I am more of planner...............

From what Ive read, an infusion with dried nettle would be 1 Tablespoon ppo.
Martha Stewart says if you are using fresh herbs in cooking instead of dried, use a ratio of 3:1 - so Id say use at least 3 tablespoons nettle ppo.

But to my mind the bigger question is if you are using an infusion or ground up nettle actually in the soap? If its an infusion I say fill the freaking jar with ground up nettle and soak in warm oil for a day because 1 tablespoon ppo dried was lighter than I wanted.