Scent Issues!

[ha.johnson92]

I recently made a batch of M+P soap using a SLS free base. I added some sweet almond oil and honey as my skin is quite dry at the moment, I also added orange essential oil to give it a nice fresh scent. I added quite a bit of the oil but I feel like I can't smell it at all?! Does this oil not hold its smell very well in a soap or did I do something wrong? It smelt very fragrant in the bottle so I'm confused as to where all that lovely smell has gone!!?? I'm a complete novice to soap making and don't have a lot of knowledge so any help or advice is very welcome! Thanks in advance!! x

 

[GML]

How much of the orange EO did you add to the soap base and how much was there of the soap base?

 

[ha.johnson92]

How much of the orange EO did you add to the soap base and how much was there of the soap base?

I had 1lb of soap base and I added about 30 drops of the orange EO. Was worried about adding too much so I stopped there as it seemed like a lot!

 

[GML]

for 1 lb of soap base, about .80 ounces of Orange EO can be used.

 

[Anstarx]

1 drop of eo is typically around 60mg. It differs for different eos but orange is not a viscous eo so I think 60mg is about right.
For 30 drops, this means you used approximately 1.8g eo in 454g (1lb) soap.

Even if your drops are bigger, let's say 3g here, even so you will have less than 1% eo concentration in your soap. That's really low, especially as orange eo is not a long-lasting one.

I would recommend you calculate your eo by weight instead of drops or volume, that way it's much more accurate. Secondly, use a fragrance calculator, I recommend the one from bramble berry, it has MP soap in options: https://www.brambleberry.com/calculator?calcType=fragrance

I just used this calculator and found out for 16oz (1lb) of soap, you would need at least 4.5g (0.16oz) to get even a light scent. By the standard we used before, that will be more than 240 drops lol. And that's for a 10x orange EO, not a regualr one.

 

[ha.johnson92]

Didn't even know fragrance calculators were a thing! Thanks so much for pointing this out!! Right, looks like I need to go back to the drawing board

 

[LilyJo]

Don't forget whatever the fragrance calculator says it will still need to pass a safety assessment and I think our assessors have a slightly more conservative view of fragrance loads than in the US.

 

[Todd Ziegler]

I have found that EO doesn't work for me that well in M&P soap, so I stick to fragrance oils.

 

[Nona'sFarm]

I have had no problem with EOs sticking in MP, but do follow the Bramble Berry fragrance calculator recommendation at the medium level. However, orange and lemon don't seem to last as long, so I usually mix them with litsea (may chang).