Sooo... How long do oils last? lol

[TheBobbiesRSurly]

Hi all!

So I was digging in my closets earlier and unearthed my old soapmaking kit! It even still had some unopened bags of oils (palm and coconut from Brambleberry).

Fat chance, but how long do oils stay good? Keep in mind this kit is at least ten years old.

 

[BattleGnome]

Check the expiration dates. If by some reason they haven't expired then they might still be good.

Personally, I would do a test batch then keep the soap for my own use. I wouldn't expect much but maybe you might have some ingredients to play with for testing techniques.

(I'd also wait for someone more experienced than me to give an opinion)

 

[TheBobbiesRSurly]

I don't see any expiration dates on the bags - might just use 'em and see what happens! Thanks

 

[TheBobbiesRSurly]

Addendum - So I dug up my old Brambleberry account and found the order. Turns out those oils I found aren't ten years old! They're only three Might try to play with them for my first batches, might as well right?

 

[penelopejane]

Addendum - So I dug up my old Brambleberry account and found the order. Turns out those oils I found aren't ten years old! They're only three Might try to play with them for my first batches, might as well right?

You should be able to smell them if they are off. Or if they have expanded.

 

[Susie]

Smell them. Have a female smell them (women have a much better sense of smell, in my experience). If they smell the least bit off, toss them, and replace with an equal amount of the same oil (but new, LOL).

 

[dixiedragon]

I use off-smelling oils at 5% in my recipes to use them up. Only had 1 batch develop DOS. Out of many many batches.

 

[Scooter]

Or if they have expanded.

I have never heard of this before. What does it mean for an oil to expand?

Scooter

 

[kchaystack]

I have never heard of this before. What does it mean for an oil to expand?

Scooter

I think she meant expired.


If they were kept in air tight containers, out of sunlight and at at constant temp so they stayed solid most of the time, it is possible they might have not gone off.

 

[TheBobbiesRSurly]

Thanks so much everyone - I'll pop off the caps today and give them a whiff. If I don't smell anything off I'm gonna give them a go in a batch

 

[penelopejane]

I have never heard of this before. What does it mean for an oil to expand?

Scooter

I have seen off Coconut oil in a chinese shop which you could smell from an aisle over. When I got to the bottles of coconut oil they had expanded, turned a tiny bit pink and stank to high heaven. They weren't even open.

 

[DeeAnna]

Before people figured out how to properly harvest, store, and process coconut meat and produce high quality clean coconut oil, CO was considered by soap makers to be one of the oils most likely to go nasty rancid. I was surprised to learn that, given that we all assume nowadays that CO is one of the more stable fats to soap with.

Older soap making manuals warned about the unusually bad smell of coconut oil soap that would linger on the skin. They avoided using much CO in their finer toilet soaps, even though it was common knowledge at the time that CO made lots of lather.

Maybe the nasty CO you smelled in the Chinese shop was made the old fashioned way???

 

[topofmurrayhill]

Oils have no idea when they're supposed to expire and neither do their distributors. It depends on initial quality and storage conditions, so it can't be predicted with any accuracy. As people have suggested, the most practical way to judge is usually with your nose.

That said, 10 year old oils are definitely fit for the trash whereas some 3 year old oils might be okay.