Orange (Peel) Wax

[Mobjack Bay]

There are some older posts and threads about orange wax here on SMF and I also found chemical information on the web. I linked everything I found, below. I used it once as a post-cook addition to HP soap and months later it still smells wonderfully orangey. I would like to try it in CP soap. It’s not in SoapCalc or any of the other calculators I’ve looked at. The third website states that the chemical composition is similar to lanolin and gives a SAP of 70-110. Can anyone share additional information or suggestions based on experience using orange wax in CP soap? Does the frangrance stick in CP? I bought my bottle from Dr. Adorable on Amazon.

No mention of photosensitization is made on the Koster Keunen website. In fact, it suggests the opposite. I don’t think it matters either way for soap, but thought it was worth highlighting.

“Koster Keunen Orange Wax can enhance sunscreens at low levels and may function as a moisturizer and emollient in personal care applications. It can be used in hair care applications as a texturizing agent in both leave in and wash-out products. Additional applications include cosmetics, skin care, lip products and sunscreens.”

At the last SMF link I shared below, post #29 wrote this: I used the general guidelines for NON-TRIGLYCERIDE waxes like beeswax and lanolin etc which have fatty acids but aren't true triglycerides...which is "don't go above 1.5% of total oils". from the book
The Soapmaker's Companion: A Comprehensive Guide with Recipes, Techniques & Know-How by Susan Miller Cavitch

Here’s what I’ve found so far:
https://www.alfa-chemicals.co.uk/products/fruit-waxes (This site states that the chemical composition is similar to lanolin)
https://www.newdirectionsaromatics.com/products/waxes/orange-wax-unprocessed.html (states that composition is similar to lanolin; the orange wax I bought is much thicker than what’s pictured; one reviewer at NDA site mentioned using it in CP soap, but didn’t give details)
https://www.kosterkeunen.com/product/orange-wax-deodorized/ (This looks more like what I have although mine is a bit darker; gives SAP value as 70-110)
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/orange-peel-wax.26287/
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/orange-wax-anyone-used-it.56215/
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/natural-orange-color.70022/page-2#post-700746

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I’m planning to make two different soaps with orange peel wax this weekend. The look for the first one is inspired by Lovin’ Soap’s Calendula & Yellow Brazilian Clay Soap https://www.lovinsoap.com/2016/07/natural-calendula-yellow-brazilian-clay-soap-design/. I added 1% orange wax to a vegan recipe, along with some lemongrass EO in case the orange scent doesn’t stick. I also used sodium lactate for the first time because my recipe is relatively high in soft oils. Pics below

Before I started on the first soap, I mixed up some annatto powder and olive oil. I am planning to use that in a recipe that has 5% orange wax. The infusion looks a little more “rusty” orange than I expected. I might try it as a gradient soap. That way if the scent doesn’t stick it will still have eye appeal. Pics below

 

[MGM]

Pls report fully! I have a litre of orange wax that I don't know what to do with....

 

[Misschief]

It can be used in hair care applications as a texturizing agent in both leave in and wash-out products.

I found this line of particular interest as I've recently started making shampoo bars. I still have a tub of orange wax and I think I'll be experimenting.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I just realized that the book reference I added above states that you should not use more than 1.5% in soap. Oops! I’m okay on today’s soap, but I will need to rethink the next one where I was planning to use 5%. If it won’t saponify, will it act as a SF? Or cause something weird to happen in the soap? I guess I need to read more about how lanolin behaves...

@Misschief LUSH Cosmetics has orange wax as a component in many of its products and I think I saw some hair products when I was surfing the web.

Just what I needed to know about lanolin is here on SMF!
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/lanolin-saponification-or-not.59960/

Also found in Susan Miller Cavitch’s book online that lanolin is 40% unsaponifiables, while most fats and oils are between “.5 and 2%” and beeswax is 50%.

Haven’t even had my coffee yet, but I have soap out of the mold and cut . This is the one with 1% orange wax. It added some color to the upper layer, which also has dried Calendula petals. The bottom layer has gold Brazilian clay added as well, and the pencil line is AC. In addition to the orange wax, I also added lemongrass EO. The lemongrass is stronger, but there are some other notes in there. I would not characterize this soap as having a strong orange scent.



I decided that I’m going to blast ahead with 5% orange wax soap. To stay on the safe side with an unknown percentage of unsaponifiables in the orange wax, I’m going to up my SF to 7%. edited to add: I am assuming that I have accounted for at least 40% of the unsaponifiables by using lanolin as a surrogate in SoapCalc.

 

[earlene]

I looked back at some of my notes yesterday for soaps in which I have used lanolin. Some with 6%, in fact. But my notes did not indicate when I reached a percentage that was too draggy, so I stopped searching. There was at least one soap with lanolin that was too draggy, but I didn't find it so don't really know how high I went. I only mention this because you said the orange peel wax is supposed to be a bit like lanolin.

The rest of the soap formula matters, when evaluating if the percentage works, though, so I don't think it's only about how much is too much.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Thanks @earlene. I’m planning to use a recipe that is 50% PO, 15% CO, 5% Castor oil and the rest OO and orange wax. I will report back! I actually put it off for the morning because the call of indigo was to much to resist.

I made a quick batch of orange wax soap. I cut the orange wax back to 3% and left the SF at 5%. Then I managed to forget to add the 5% castor oil. I’ve always been careful to check my oils off, but for some reason I didn’t do that for this batch so now I’m at a lye heavy place, I think. Or who knows because I don’t actually know what percentage of the orange wax is saponifiable, I just have the estimate for lanolin. The batter accelerated big time. Could that be due to the low or no SF? Or, maybe it was due to the orange wax. It happened right around the point that all the lovey orangey scent was disappearing from the batter. By the time I finished getting it into the mold I couldn’t detect any scent at all. Oh well... it did help to make the soap a lovely color, along with the annatto seed infused oil. Edited to add: now that the soap is cool, I can definitely detect a scent. It reminds me of oranges when they start to get a little old. Edited again to add: now that the soap has sat overnight, the orange scent is better. There seem to be some brighter notes. It still can’t match what I got when I used the wax with HP as a SF, but it’s pleasant, not old smelling.

As I mentioned in my first post, I used this same orange wax in HP soap earlier this year. It still has a very orangey scent to it, so maybe I will use it that way. Apparently it also makes nicely scented candles, but I will need wax and wicks and whatever else I read about in the candle making forum

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I edited the above post to reflect a shift in the scent overnight.

A couple of pics, below. It went into gel-phase really quickly, but to me it looks as if it may not have made it all the way out to the very edges.

And, much to my surprise, it passes the zap test this morning.

Pics here! I also forgot to mention that I added a tiny bit of the annatto powder to the batter. The color is maybe a little less brown than it looks here, but it’s not what I would call a pure orange.

 

[earlene]

They look real nice, Mobjack.

 

[dibbles]

Nice color and the soaps look great!

 

[SoaperForLife]

I use orange wax but strictly for the scent along with orange essential oil. I find that my bars made this way keep their scent for a very long time.

 

[Richard Perrine]

Hmmm. Interesting. Is the composition truly a wax (oil) or some misleading, fancified term the industry uses?

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Hmmm. Interesting. Is the composition truly a wax (oil) or some misleading, fancified term the industry uses?

It’s really a wax. Check the links in my first post that give the chemical composition. It’s from orange peels.

I use orange wax but strictly for the scent along with orange essential oil. I find that my bars made this way keep their scent for a very long time.

Thanks, that’s good to know! I just compared the scent of the soap to the scent of the orange EO I bought from WSP. It’s just straight EO, not 5 fold, etc. To me, the soap smells more like “whole” fruit, if that makes sense, while the EO smells more like orange peel. That’s kind of funny since the wax is made from the peel. The scent of the wax definitely seems more complex to my nose. In any case, I’m super happy with the scent and even happier to hear that you’re finding it lasts. YAY!

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Trial without annatto

Here’s another soap made with the orange peel wax recipe and a cocoa butter recipe that has some goat’s milk powder added to the oil phase. For the orange wax recipe, this time I wanted to compare the color of the orange wax alone, without adding the annatto infused oil and the pinch of annatto powder from the bottom of the infused oil. At 3% orange wax, the color is a good pure yellow in the little un-gelled “leftover” soap, and a slightly darker yellow in the gelled soap. I was hoping the milk would brown a little, but forgot to add it to the water before I added the lye, and wasn’t sure if I could add it after that.

I can’t seem to get layering thing down. Believe it or not, I intended to have thicker layers at the bottom, grading to thinner layers towards the top. How on earth did I manage to pour two orange layers in a row.? And the amounts wouldn’t have been right anyway because there’s not enough in the lower layers. I’m splitting my batter based on the total batter weight in soapcalc. This has happened more than once now, so I need to do something differently.

Working time was an issue, as it always seems to be for me. The orange wax soap accelerated fast the last time, so I lowered my working temp a little and tried to stay just below light trace. The batter started to set up nonetheless, and then I had to work fast in order to get any layering at all. I really wanted those cocoa pencil lines that I barely managed to pull off.

There is an unattractive blotchy color shift/discoloration in the orange layer of the bars, which is not apparent in the little sample that did not go through gel. Is gelling the problem?

Got my bubbles way down!

 

[Richard Perrine]

Trial without annatto

Here’s another soap made with the orange peel wax recipe and a cocoa butter recipe that has some goat’s milk powder added to the oil phase. For the orange wax recipe, this time I wanted to compare the color of the orange wax alone, without adding the annatto infused oil and the pinch of annatto powder from the bottom of the infused oil. At 3% orange wax, the color is a good pure yellow in the little un-gelled “leftover” soap, and a slightly darker yellow in the gelled soap. I was hoping the milk would brown a little, but forgot to add it to the water before I added the lye, and wasn’t sure if I could add it after that.

I can’t seem to get layering thing down. Believe it or not, I intended to have thicker layers at the bottom, grading to thinner layers towards the top. How on earth did I manage to pour two orange layers in a row.? And the amounts wouldn’t have been right anyway because there’s not enough in the lower layers. I’m splitting my batter based on the total batter weight in soapcalc. This has happened more than once now, so I need to do something differently.

Working time was an issue, as it always seems to be for me. The orange wax soap accelerated fast the last time, so I lowered my working temp a little and tried to stay just below light trace. The batter started to set up nonetheless, and then I had to work fast in order to get any layering at all. I really wanted those cocoa pencil lines that I barely managed to pull off.

There is an unattractive blotchy color shift/discoloration in the orange layer of the bars, which is not apparent in the little sample that did not go through gel. Is gelling the problem?

Got my bubbles way down!

View attachment 39452

I like it. How is the fragrance from the orange peel wax?

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Thank you!

I like it. How is the fragrance from the orange peel wax?

See post #13, above!

 

[Richard Perrine]

Okay. Received a container of orange peel wax and was struck by the colour. It certainly is oily, slightly viscous, to the touch and the fragrance is a dark orange. I did taste it and it was pungent as expected. I love the fragrance. I made some of my transparent soap, melted it and added about 5ml of the wax to the melted soap. I typically add this much essential oil to my individual bars when testing with no issues with hardness. In this case, after 24 hours, the soap bar continues to be a little soft. Other soaps in the past would have been sufficiently hard by now. I wanted to create a baseline of the wax's properties, affects on my soap. Now I have a good idea what to do next. The bar is a lovely dark orange and translucent. Not as transparent as my soaps normally are using EOs. This has to do with the non-saponifiables which contribute to the deep orange colour. When I rubbed some between my fingers, there was definite orange staining going on. It has a lovely, strong orange fragrance. Hopefully a few days of curing will harden it further. Thank you all for introducing this wax to me. I love citrus fragrances and have found a new option! Whoop whoop!

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Okay. Received a container of orange peel wax and was struck by the colour. It certainly is oily to the touch and the fragrance is a dark orange. I did taste it and it was pungent as expected. I love the fragrance. I made some of my transparent soap, melted it and added about 5ml of the wax to the melted soap. I typically add this much essential oil to my individual bars when testing with no issues with hardness. In this case, after 24 hours, the soap bar continues to be a little soft. Other soaps in the past would have been sufficiently hard by now. I wanted to create a baseline of the wax's properties, affects on my soap. Now I have a good idea what to do next. The bar is a lovely dark orange and translucent. Not as transparent as my soaps normally are using EOs. This has to do with the non-saponifiables which contribute to the deep orange colour. When I rubbed some between my fingers, there was definite orange staining going on. It has a lovely, strong orange fragrance. Hopefully a few days of curing with harden it further. Thank you all for introducing this wax to me. I love citrus fragrances and have found a new option! Whoop whoop!
View attachment 39610

Love the way that looks! I hope it hardens up the way it should. The soaps I made (above) still smell nicely of orange, especially the one that has the most orange wax per bar (post #8).

 

[Richard Perrine]

I also noticed a waxier sheen and texture to the surface of the bars.

 

[Richard Perrine]

I also noticed a waxier sheen and texture to the surface of the bars.

So, tried adding the same concentration of the wax in my tried and true CP soap and it was a no-go! [emoji4] I added the wax after light trace and poured. The colour was identical to the transparent soap, but soon lightened. It was also super dry and brittle. Any ideas?