Duplicating products: Curl Junkie Daily Fix Cleansing Conditioner (part two)

So what do we need to include in a duplicate recipe for this product? Take a look at the ingredient list again - Water, Cetyl Alcohol, Cetearyl Alcohol, Behentrimonium Methosulfate, Cetrimonium Chloride, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, PEG -7 Olivate, Guar Hydroxypropytrimonium Chloride, Tetrasodium EDTA, Hydrolyzed Oat Flour, Mentha Piperita (Pepperment) Leaf Extract, Matricaria Recuitita (Chamomile) Flower Extract, Yucca Leaf Extract, Urtica Dioica (Nettle) Leaf Extract, Melissa Officinalis (Melissa) Leaf Extract, Polysorbate 60, Equisetum Arvense (Horsetail) Leaf Extract, Tocopheryl Acetate, Phenoxyethanol, Caprylyl Glycol, Fragrance.

I consider the essential ingredients to be water, cetyl alcohol, cetearyl alcohol, behentrimonium methosulfate, cetrimonium chloride, cocamidopropyl betaine, PEG-7 olivate, guar (or another cationic polymer), hydrolyzed oat flour (or hydrolyzed protein), and preservative. (You don't really need to include the Vitamin E as none of the ingredients have short shelf lives and the polysorbate 60 is an emulsifier. We already have the BTMS-25 or BTMS-50 as an emulsifier here, so it's kinda pointless to include it. It was probably part of another ingredient, possibly the extracts, so we don't need to include it here!)

Oh, and as a note, if you don't include the cetrimonium chloride in this product, you'll have a thicker product. There will be a few notes about this at the bottom of the post.

POSSIBLE DUPLICATION OF THE CURL JUNKIE DAILY FIX CLEANSING CONDITIONER WITH CATIONIC GUAR AND OAT FLOUR (VERSION 1.0)
HEATED WATER PHASE
0.25% cationic guar
0.25% hydrolyzed oat flour
80.5% water (replace with hydrosols of choice)
2% cocamidopropyl betaine
2% PEG-7 olivate

HEATED OIL PHASE
7% BTMS-50
3.5% cetearyl alcohol
2% cetrimonium chloride

COOL DOWN PHASE
0.5% powdered extract of choice
0.5% powdered extract of choice
0.5% to 1% preservative
1% fragrance or essential oil

Hydrate the oat flour and cationic guar in room temperature water for at least one hour before the time you might be using it in the product. (I wouldn't use all the water phase for this because you'll want some for the product! Use maybe 20% or so.)

Weigh the water phase and put into a double boiler. Weigh the oil phase and put into a double boiler. Heat and hold both for 20 minutes at 70˚C or 158˚F. Remove from the heat and combine the two phases. When the mixture reaches 50˚C or 120˚F, add the water with the cationic guar and oat flour to the product and mix well. Add the cool down phase at 45˚C or lower. Use and rejoice.

This should give you a medium viscosity product.

A note on this recipe: If you're using BTMS-25, you can substitute it directly for the BTMS-50, but use cetyl alcohol at 50% of the BTMS-25 amount. THIS ONLY APPLIES TO THESE RECIPES as we aren't looking to the BTMS to emulsify anything! If you are looking to emulsify any amount of oils or silicones, you need to use BTMS-50 instead.

Another note on this recipe: If you're not using cetrimonium chloride, reduce the amount of BTMS-50 or BTMS-25 to 4% and the fatty alcohol to 2%. Cetrimonium chloride thins out our recipes, so a 7% BTMS-50 recipe without cetrimonium chloride will be very very thick. 

I know I'm trying to duplicate the product and the fatty alcohols come before the behentrimonium methosulfate in the recipe, so I should be putting more fatty alcohols into the product than BTMS, right?

When you consider that if we are using 7% BTMS-25 we should have 25% BTMS (so 1.75% behentrimonium methosulfate and 5.25% cetearyl alcohol), so in that case, we have far more cetearyl alcohol than we do cationic quaternary compound). By adding 3.5% cetyl alcohol a conditioner with BTMS-25, we'd have 5.25% cetearyl alcohol, 3.5% cetyl alcohol, and 1.75% behentrimonium methosulfate. So we do have more fatty alcohols than behentrimonium methosulfate!

If we're using 7% BTMS-50, we'd have 3.5% behentrimonium methosulfate and some percentage of cetyl alcohol and butylene glycol in the product.  If I were to use BTMS-50, I'd have 3.5% behentrimonium methosulfate, 3.5% cetearyl alcohol (added), and less than 3.5% cetyl alcohol (in BTMS-50).

Okay, another thought. If fatty alcohols boost the substantivity of cationic quaternary compounds - add them around 50% of the compound amount - and if these ingredients contain fatty alcohols already, what's the point of adding more fatty alcohol? We've already got enough in the BTMS-25 or BTMS-50 to boost the substantivity! Great point. We're adding the fatty alcohol here as an emollient or moisturizer.

Why is this version one? Because I'm planning a version two! I don't have hydrolyzed oat flour, but I do have hydrolyzed oat protein, and since I'm not that worried about the viscosity of the product (the BTMS and fatty alcohols are great thickeners), I think I'd prefer to use the liquid protein at 2% and leave out the hydrolyzed flour. And cationic guar gum can lead to build up on our hair that should be removed by foamy shampoo type products. If you aren't using a product of that nature, then this probably isn't the best cationic polymer for you. I'm thinking a better choice might be polyquat 44 or honeyquat (click here for information on cationic polymers).

As a final note for this post! This stuff applies to all conditioners you might make, not just a duplicate of this one! The essential component of any conditioner is the cationic quaternary compound. The rest of the ingredients are what makes the product good for oily hair or dry hair or chemically processed hair, and so on.

Join me tomorrow for another possible duplicate version of the Curl Junkie Daily Fix Cleansing Conditioner!