Strange Shea butter dark spots

[cthylla]

Forgive me for not being able to find this; I am sure it had to be covered before and I did look!!

I bought 25lb of unrefined Shea butter. I opened it up, and it had these weird dark spots everywhere. I've bought this about 4 times previously and never had these dark spots. Is this a bad batch?

Or is this normal for unrefined?? Thanks for any input!!!

 

[cthylla]

Also, I'll definitely contact the manufacturer tomorrow, but I was curious if anyone had seen this before. I've seen dark gunk at the very bottom of Shea butter bags... But never all the way through!

 

[Obsidian]

I've never seen shea like that, How does it smell? I would request a replacement, it looks moldy to me.

 

[galaxyMLP]

How hot was it when you received it? It could be that it melted on the way to you and cooled slowly. That might cause the harder fats to solidify in clumps and cause that variegated look.

Are the darker areas softer or slightly translucent compared to the white part?

 

[cthylla]

No, they are not more translucent. It just looks like dirty Shea butter! I of course cannot say whether or not it melted in transit, but it was in the 60s when I received it.

Uhg. What a pain! I had my lye water already cooling... So I had to dig through my recipes to find one with similar numbers but no Shea butter!

Thank you for the quick responses!

 

[cthylla]

Oh, it smells completely normal! I'll let you know what the manufacturer says.