Questions I missed: Whipped butters - how to add preservatives?

From the whipped butter post I wrote about yesterday, Roxine asked in August 2011: If I wanted to add preservatives to this, do I add the recommended usage amount based on the total product weight. So say, .05% of the butter made with the oils and FO? Or is the percentage of preservative I use a part of the total 100% of the final product, so i would take .5% off somewhere else, like in my oils. I hope I don't sound too stupid here...

No, you don't sound stupid! The only stupid question is the one never asked! And when it comes to preservatives, you can never be too careful!

My short answer is this - you don't need to use preservatives in an anhydrous product unless you fear water might come in contact with it. For something like a sugar scrub, you want a preservative. For a whipped butter that won't be coming into contact with water, you don't really need it. Having said that, if you want to add one, then add one!

If you do want to use a preservative, you need to choose one that is oil soluble. Phenonip would work - you'd use it in the heated oil phase of your product - as would Liquipar Oil. If you want to use Phenonip, you'd use it at 0.5% to 1% as you heat your butters and oils. If you want to use Liquipar Oil, use it at 0.4% to 0.8% when the product is at less than 80˚C (which means pretty much any point with a whipped butter).

So let's say you want to use Phenonip in your whipped butter...here's a sample recipe...

WHIPPED SHEA BUTTER WITH PRESERVATIVES
78.5% shea butter (I use ultra refined)
19% fractionated coconut oil (or any other oil)
1% Phenonip
0.5% Vitamin E (to retard rancidity, optional)
1% fragrance or essential oil

Weigh your shea butter, oil, and Phenonip in a heat proof container and put into your double boiler to heat until melted. Remove and leave to cool (I put it in the freezer, but that's just my preference). When cooled, add your Vitamin E and fragrance/essential oil and whip until it reaches the whippiness level you like.

Having said all of this, you don't really need to preserve your anhydrous products due to something called water activity. And considering how freakazoid people get about parabens and considering that parabens are the only preservatives suitable for anhydrous products, you might find it easier not to preserve them!

As an addendum to this question: If you're using preservatives, use them at the suggested levels for the total amount of this recipe. So if you have a lotion recipe that totals 100%, you would use 0.5% liquid Germall Plus and remove 0.5% from the water phase, so your recipe always totals 100%. (We always remove additional ingredients from the water phase - click here for the reasoning behind that!) Your recipe should always total 100%. If you're making a lotion, shampoo, conditioner, or any other product we could make, use the preservative at the suggested usage rate in the suggested phase and make sure your product totals 100%.

HOWEVER this can change with something like a sugar or salt scrub. For instance, when I make a sugar scrub, I make the base, then add the scrubby bits. I base my preservative amount on the amount in the base and I don't tend to take into account the salt or sugar. So I'd make up my base of oils, butters, and so on and use 1% Phenonip in the heated stage. I would add my salt or sugar at the rate I like - generally 140% for sugar, although I will go higher - and not add extra preservative to compensate for the scrubbies.

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Questions I missed: Whipping butters - why are butters whippable?

I love reading your comments and e-mails, but there have been times when I've missed some really interesting stuff because I've had too much going on in my life. (To give you an idea of what life is like right now - I have 171 unread e-mails, and 88 flagged so I can remember to write responses, and I'm trying to get ready for and promote National Gaming Day, and trying to have a social life!) I thought I'd try to get to some of those questions and comments you've made that were missed for one reason or another because there's some interesting stuff in there!

From this post on whipped butters, I found two questions that went unanswered...

From p (July 2010): I've got a question for you... what is it that makes butters whippable? Is it just that they're soft but solid at room temp? Could I whip an oil & beeswax (no butter) balm? Just curious!! 

Hi p! The answer to the first part is mostly yes. We can whip them because they're filled with lovely fatty acids that are solid at room temperature. Butters tend to have lots of nice fatty acids like stearic and lauric acid that are great thickeners. Not all butters are whippable at room temperature - shea, mango, and babassu are, but cocoa butter and kokum butter aren't. This because they have different melting points. But that's kind of obvious! 

I did some experiments on whipping oils with various thickeners that might interest you...(although I see you posted there and I didn't respond to your question then! Sorry, p!) 

Whipped shea without butter - cetyl alcohol

Whipped shea without butter - stearic acid

Whipped shea without butter - cetearyl alcohol

Whipped shea without butter - esters and cetearyl alcohol

As for the second part of the question, there's an interesting balm I found on Voyageur for non-petroleum baby jelly that uses oil and beeswax. 94% castor oil, 5% beeswax, and 1% Vitamin E. I've tried it - I liked it. You could try this with another oil, but it won't work as well as there's an interesting interaction between beeswax and castor oil! Beeswax is partially soluble in castor oil, so you get a thicker and more viscous product when you mix beeswax and castor oil together than you would mixing something like sunflower oil and beeswax. This is one of the reasons we see these two ingredients together in lipsticks - they prevent the colour from feathering into fine lines around your lips! 

So the short answers are...

1. Butters have fatty acids that are solid at room temperature, which is why we can whip them. 

2. And you could make a balm from beeswax and an oil, but it won't be the same as whipping a butter! 

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Experimenting in the workshop: Avocado butter

Randi from Creations by Eden sent me out some green avocado butter, which is "...made from solid fraction of raw-green avocado oil, then fortified with sal butter-stearic fraction and virgin oil de coco-crème® solid fraction." It's light green in colour and has a very earthy smell to it. It's quite hard and would need to be melted to include it in anything - you can't just whip this butter from room temperature!

I decided to do something basic with it and make a whipped butter. I used rice bran oil, because that was the challenge for the Iron Chemist and it was sitting right on top of my work table, and fragrance so I could get a better idea of the consistency and feel of the butter on my skin.

WHIPPED AVOCADO BUTTER
77% green avocado butter
22% rice bran oil
1% fragrance oil (Clementine Cupcake, what else?)

I melted the avocado butter and rice bran oil in my double boiler and heated until it melted. I put it in the freezer to harden. After 40 minutes, the middle was still liquidy, so I left it in for another 10 minutes. (I would normally leave shea, mango, or cocoa butter for about half an hour.) It was still liquidy, but I wanted to play with it so I removed it from the freezer, added my fragrance oil, then started whipping it with my whisks. It whipped up very nicely...but I can't get over that earthy smell. I added another 1% Clementine Cupcake fragrance oil and whipped a little more. Nope, still smelling it. So another 1% - I wouldn't go higher than 3% in a leave on product - and more whipping.

What do I think of it? I really like the feeling of this butter. It feels a lot like babassu oil in that it melts on contact with your skin. It's greasy-ish at first, but starts to feel drier after about 10 minutes or so (I think the greasiness comes from the rice bran oil, not the butter). I really like it...but I can't get over the earthy smell.

I don't tend to use unrefined butters because that earthy smell really gets to me, and this is one of the strongest I've smelled in a while. It's not an unpleasant smell, but it's something I don't tend to like in my products. If you like earthy smells - for instance, I can't stand having patchouli in the house or even catching a whiff of it at the farmers' market - then this is a great butter for you. If you don't, then use the butter at lower levels in your products.

Why use avocado butter? Avocado oil is filled with phytosterols and polyphenols that are fantastic for reducing inflammation and itchiness. It's great in a hair care product as it's easily absorbed, and it might help with dandruff prone hair. (Click on the link for more information on this oil.)

As an aside, my husband woke up yesterday morning and said to me, "You're lucky you don't have a stupid husband." I agree with him, but why? "Because you leave out these containers with things that look like icing and smell like cupcakes, and a stupid husband would eat them and die." One wouldn't die from eating whipped avocado butter, but it wouldn't taste like cupcakes. "But how do I know it doesn't taste like it smells? It looks like icing! You're so lucky I'm not stupid." He went on to suggest I should bake some cupcakes so we had something in the house that smelled and tasted like cupcakes. I think he's right - we need some real cupcakes! (I think you've figured out by now that I'm obsessed with cupcakes! And I haven't even shown you my cupcake fabric pillowcases!) And I am a lucky woman to have him (not just because he avoids eating my products)!

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Oil or emulsified scrub?

My friend Ken, an herbal nutritionist, asked me about the differences between oil based and emulsified scrubs and why he would choose one over the other.

The functions of the two scrubs are quite similar - they are both intended to exfoliate the skin with salt, sugar, or other scratchy things and leave behind a nice oily film - with one key difference - the  emulsified scrub turns into a lotion type product when water is applied while the oil based scrub is rinsed off when water is applied and doesn't turn into a lotion type product.

In an oil based scrub, we use only oil soluble ingredients like oils, butters, and esters. In an emulsified scrub, we use oil soluble ingredients like oils and butters, but we can include water soluble ingredients because we're including an emulsifier - Polawax, e-wax, BTMS-50, or another emulsifier of your choice - so you could add some humectants or proteins or other water soluble ingredients.

With an oil based scrub, you will likely need to mix the product before using it as the salt or sugar will sink to the bottom of the container, whereas the exfoliant is suspended in the emulsified scrub. (I say you will generally need to mix the product - with the manicure scrub I've linked to below, if you put a ton of salt or sugar into it, you won't need to mix it as it is very thick!)

What isn't different is the need to preserve either product. Some people don't preserve oil based scrubs with the logic that they don't contain water, so they don't need a preservative. I disagree here. (We had a debate about this as it pertains to water activity, and it was very interesting!) If there's a chance water might be introduced into the product - through wet hands, being in the shower, and so on - I believe you need to add an oil soluble preservative, which will generally be a paraben based preservative, like Phenonip or Liquipar Oil. I'd suggest putting an anti-oxidant into either product to make the oils and butters last longer,

As an aside, my mother is very good at never putting her wet hands into a scrub, always using a one-time use plastic spatula or spoon, but most people will put their wet hands into the product regardless of their good intentions! And good intentions won't preserve a product, no matter how many people put it on their cutesy labels along with "love" and "blessings". (I always think of Ned Flanders going off on the townspeople of Springfield after they re-build his house when I hear the phase "good intentions". It makes me laugh.) 

Here's one of my favourite manicure scrubs with lecithin and lanolin. It can feel very greasy at first, but after a few minutes, that feeling will dissipate and you'll just feel moisturization. When I make this recipe at home, I admit I don't use a preservative because the product is primarily for my mom (and secondarily for me) and we are both really good at not putting our hands into it. But when I make it for others, I always include Phenonip.

Just a few thoughts for today!

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