I was making a soap with olive oil, coconut oil, and shea butter. Everything was going well until I added the fragrance oil near the end of blending. The batter turned into something that looked curdled hollandaise sauce. Did I add it too late? How do I prevent that from happening again?
Fragrance oil and curdling
- Thread starter samj
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Welcome to SMF! What you are describing sounds like what soapers call "ricing," and it is almost always caused by the fragrance oil or another additive.
Was your FO purchased from a soap supplier? If so, did it have any reviews for use in soap? A fair number of FOs just don't work that well in soap, especially cheaper fragrance oils purchased from Amazon. They can cause all kinds of problems, including acceleration, ricing, seizing, separation, etc.
Was your FO purchased from a soap supplier? If so, did it have any reviews for use in soap? A fair number of FOs just don't work that well in soap, especially cheaper fragrance oils purchased from Amazon. They can cause all kinds of problems, including acceleration, ricing, seizing, separation, etc.
As @AliOop said, this is ricing. For me, it has always been caused by a fragrance oil. I made soap yesterday with All Souls Day from Nurture Soap. I know it rices a little, but I love it enough to use it anyway. Unless the ricing is severe you can usually use your stick blender to smooth it out. When you know the fragrance will rice, add it when you reach, or nearly reach, emulsion. Then stir in the fragrance oil until you see the ricing, then use the stick blender to smooth it out. Unless I know that the fragrance doesn't also accelerate, I generally don't do anything overly fancy so I don't go beyond medium trace. If it happens the first time I use the FO and I am not expecting it, I usually have to pivot from my original plan and wing it. Simple hanger swirls are usually my 'save'.
I used Make Market essential oil from Michaels. I think I may have put too much in. Based on soapcalc, 43g of fragrance oil was suggested for 1400g of fat. It seemed high to me.
Thanks for advice! I just ended up throwing the whole batch out. Next time I'll try to smooth it out.
I find it is good to warm the FO to the same temperature as the oils if it is a 'ricer'. And, contrary to the popular opinion, I often add it the warmed oils before I mix in the lye solution.
I agree - I find it a lot easier to add naughty fragrances to the warm oils first. Or I go the complete opposite way and hot process the soap, adding the warmed fragrance after the cook.
Unfortunately, most of the soap fragrances sold by Michaels are only suitable for melt & pour soap, which has already completed the saponification process (meaning there is no active lye). If you use them in cold process or hot process soap, you will most likely experience problems.
Oh no! Can you fish it out of the bin? If nothing else, you could rebatch it.
Saponificarian
Well-Known Member
I have always added my fragrance oils to my warmed oil, less chance of forgetting the FO and I get less drama, I have found.
If I know a fragrance oil rices or accelerates, I always add it to my warmed oils before adding my lye mixture. It has made a world of difference for me.
OK, I found out what went wrong and I feel really stupid but I am fairly new to this hobby. I have made soap only a couple of times in the past and had never used shea butter. I thought I had bought shea butter but upon closer inspection I found out I had bought shea butter soap base, basically a melt and pour. I wondered why it was so hard to chisel out of the container! Now that I have 100% percent shee butter things are turning out nicely. Thanks so much for all the advice!
Thank you for that update. I can't say it's happened to everyone, but I for one have absolutely grabbed wrong ingredients and experienced interesting results. Glad to hear that things are on track for you now!
