When Do You Add Your Essential Oils?

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

user 58545

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 22, 2023
Messages
86
Reaction score
77
So in the book I have it says to add the essential oils into the melted hard butters/oils which would be at the point before adding the lye water etc

However following a recipe in the Bramble berry book it says to add the essential oils when it gets to trace.

Is one way preferred over another or are both ok?
 
It depends on what you are trying to do, and which EO or FO you are using. The rules are the same for FO, by the way. :)

If you will be making a single-color soap, then adding EO/FO to the oils works very well — unless you will be using a spicy or floral scent, most of which accelerate significantly. If you add one of those to the oils, you may not have enough time to get your oil and lye solution well mixed.

Also, if you want to separate your batter to make different colors for swirls, then it is best to hand-stir in the scent once you reach emulsion (which is before trace) and after you have split and colored the soap.

An exception is if you are using a scent (like most citrus) that slows trace, Then you are pretty free to add it to the oils or at emulsion.

Many soaping videos encourage you to blend to trace. That can be good good beginners to ensure a stable batter. However, I’d encourage you to learn how to blend just to emulsion, or at the most, a very light trace. Lisa at I Dream in Soap has a great YT video about that.
 
It's just a single colour, single scent basic soap. Its using 5 times orange essential oil.

I have been watching a lot of her videos lately so I am sure I will come across that one at some point.
 
It's just a single colour, single scent basic soap. Its using 5 times orange essential oil.

I have been watching a lot of her videos lately so I am sure I will come across that one at some point.
For that situation, I’d add it to the oils to keep it simple. :)
 
Yes thats what I did, took forever to come to trace. So see how this one turns out, was the exact same recipe as the first one I made just with orange essential oil instead of lemon
 
Back
Top