Green Shea Butter?!!!

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marghewitt

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I buy my shea butter in 5 pound blocks from Essential Depot. I love thier products and quality but.... I just opened a block of shea butter and it has a slight green tint to it. It smells and feels great but as I melted it and strained it into a bucket (it's organic and unrefined so there is always a bunch of little pieces of plant matter in it) like I always do and it got an even darker green. I melt it on a very, very low heat. Any thoughts or suggestions? It is 4 months old.
 
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Use spirulina powder, or green oxides for colorants and you won't know the difference....lol!

I have some shea butter from them and it doesn't have a green tint, it does have the little plant fibers in it.
 
Maybe it was the plant matter. Dust from crushed leaves might have colored it. If you're concerned about it, would they do a trade?
 
I've gotten shea from 4 or 5 sources including Essential Depot and no green tint :-/
 
The weirdest unrefined shea butter i ever got was yellow like mustard! And it stunk :eek:
 
Mine has a green tint but very slight I only noticed when I had lard piled next to it in the pot. It makes sense that it would since it's in a more natural state than refined shea butter. Like virgin olive vs extra light.
 
From Camden Grey's website. Not where you ordered from, I know, but still it's a description of natural unrefined shea butter.

Shea butter, natural unrefined. Shea butter is also called African Karite butter. This unrefined butter is expressed from the pits of the fruit of the African butter tree. This butter is smooth and its color may range from very light beige to yellow/green, the color may vary from batch to batch. Unlike our refined shea butters, this butter has a an odor which will also vary from batch to batch. We do not accept returns because you do not like the color or odor; if you have concerns, please order a sample first.

Our shea butter is cold expeller pressed and carbon treated to remove the impurities. It is not solvent extracted, but mechanically extracted. This unrefined shea butter does not go through extra carbon treatment steps as our refined shea butters do. There are no impurities left whatsoever. Shea is extremely moisturizing and gentle to the skin. In soaps, it gives a very luxurious feel to the finished product. It can also be added to creams and lotions or used alone for massage, skin cream, applied directly on small skin burns or applied to hair.
 
I buy my shea butter in 5 pound blocks from Essential Depot. I love thier products and quality but.... I just opened a block of shea butter and it has a slight green tint to it. It smells and feels great but as I melted it and strained it into a bucket (it's organic and unrefined so there is always a bunch of little pieces of plant matter in it) like I always do and it got an even darker green. I melt it on a very, very low heat. Any thoughts or suggestions? It is 4 months old.

If it smells alright and feels great it is probably good. I was reading on their site that the shelf life of their shea butter is 18 months to 2 years. I know when I use regular OO from the walmart it has a green tint to it. And it is useless to try to get decent colorways because of it. Have you called them and asked them about it?
 
Thanks everyone. I do still love Essential Depot's Shea butter and will continue to purchase it from them. I did not realize that it could be a different color from batch to batch as Camden Grey's website says but now I know. Cool. I made lotion today for the first time with it and it is AWESOME!

I have another question for all the lotion makers out there...... how do you weigh 1.7 oz or .2 oz when your scale only shows fractions? 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 - 1 3/4...... I just did 1 3/4 and 1/4 but was not sure if that is what everyone does.
 
you really need to get a scale that measures in grams. It is more accurate. Then you can just multiply the ounces 1.7 (for example) times 28.3 and that gives the number in grams.

Many scales have a button that will switch from ounces to grams easily. and you also want one that has a tare feature.
 
My bath and body recipes get fudged and tweaked all the time. It's not an exact science, until you come up with the blend you like (and then you want to repeat it!). I wouldn't worry about having the exact measurements from someone else's recipe, especially at those quantities (I'm assuming you're making a batch and not one 4 oz. bottle, in which case, those quantities then become huge). You are just putting your own signature on it. :smile:
 
LOL my scale does switch back and forth to grams and ounces. I just never bothered to look up the conversion and do the math. I guess if that is the norm I will. Wonder why all lotion recipes are shown in ounces only.
 

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