I've done several rounds of fragrance oil (FO) tests in the past few weeks. I bought at least 30 samples of different FOs from several online sites, all to see which ones might be candidates for selling in the future. I made a one pound batch of my simplest recipe, and poured about one ounce per paper cup at light trace (hence more than one test batch). I used plastic droppers to put in approximately 1.5 ml of FO in each cup, and used popsicle sticks to stir in the FO. That roughly equates to 0.7 ounces per pound of oil. Since I knew the FO's might discolor the soap, I made sure one cup had no FO. Wow! It is amazing how much the FO can change the color of soap. One of the cups was as white as the cup without any FO, while the rest ranged from slightly creamier to dark brown. I knew that vanilla in the FO makes the soap turn various shades of tan to brown, depending upon the concentration of the vanilla, and I found that it doesn't take all that much to turn the soap
brown. Ironically, the "Wedding Cake" scent was the darkest of all. I wanted to make soap cupcakes for my students with that one, but I guess they'll just have to look like chocolate cupcakes! I didn't take a picture of all 30 scents, but I did take a picture of the finalists, showing the range of discoloration.
The soap on the far left by itself has no FO. The darkest is the "wedding cake" FO.
This little experiment taught me that unless I don't care about the color of my soap, it is very important to see how the FO will change it. It is also important to know that the color change can occur over several days - to almost a week, so wait at least that long to determine the final effect.
As for scent, it became apparent that it too, changes over time, again over several days. What it smells like out of the bottle is often not a good indication of what it will smell like once soaped. And several scents changed significantly for the better after a few days.
Lesson learned? Test! Test! Test!
Note: My tests were done with CP soap. Melt and pour is an entirely different animal. I'll get to that sometime in the future.
I like your blog a lot. It is very informative and you write clearly and well.
ReplyDeleteI have been using this test method too (over a hundred tiny bars and counting) and I think it's a great way to get lots of information very quickly. However, I think your math might be off. (Or perhaps mine is!) Here's my process - see if it makes sense: .7 oz PPO is a fragrance usage rate of 4.3%. Each little one-ounce bar is actually only about 68% oils or .68 ounce (the remainder is lye and water). .68 multiplied by .043 equals .029 of an ounce. Then multiply that by 28 to convert to grams and you get .81 grams which is a little over half of what you are using. That ratio might then distort your results with respect to fragrance strength, how it behaves, accelerates, discolors, etc.
You are correct. I did not take into account the water and lye. I'm also not really precise with how much I pour into the cup - I eyeball it. However, interestingly enough, none of the test cups has an overwhelmingly strong scent. I would not say any of them are too strong. In fact, some are still somewhat weak. My test was a "quick and dirty" one, not particularly scientific. Of the ones I really like, I will eventually make a larger test batch that is more accurate. My initial plan was just to test the scent. It was after the fact the I thought about the differences in discoloration. Sounds like you are more precise with your tests, which is a good thing!
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