Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating How do you scale your recipes and maintain the same water composition?

  • How do you scale your recipes and maintain the same water composition?

    Posted by Anonymous on February 8, 2020 at 1:39 am

    I’ve been working on a water-based pomade for a week now. Finally found a recipe that I like (I normally make a batch of 1).

    Wanting to share it with my two friends, I decided to make a batch of 2 and doubled all of my ingredients. Because the water surface area didn’t change much, the amount of water evaporated didn’t double (an assumption) and I ended up with a watery batch.

    Do you have any tips on how to scale recipes to maintain the same water content ratio? I want to eventually scale to something like 20-30 batch size but don’t want to make mistakes there because it gets more expensive.

    Appreciate any advice!

    alchemist01 replied 4 years, 1 month ago 5 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Anonymous

    Guest
    February 8, 2020 at 6:50 pm

    One of my friends suggested boiling the water first, then weight out the heated amount which is an awesome idea. However, my recipe calls for clays (which I often presoak in the water). By the time I add the heated water to the clay and mix it well, it is already too warm to be added to the oils.

    I also tried mixing the hot water and oils, then adding the clay at the very end but it didn’t end up well. The clay basically globbed up together and refused to mix with the rest of the mixture.

    Just ordered a overhead stirrer to free up a hand - hopefully I can figure this out.

  • shechemie

    Member
    February 8, 2020 at 8:57 pm

    You don’t have to use the water at a hot temperature for it to continue to be sterile.  Boil the water, cover it and let it cool, then use. 

  • gunther

    Member
    February 9, 2020 at 11:40 pm

    Industrial tanks should have some welded-in, protuding, volume marks
    You just add some extra water to top it off, so the volume mark is just beneath the liquid surface.

  • Anonymous

    Guest
    February 10, 2020 at 7:55 am

    @shechemie Didn’t know people heated up water to sterilize it, I use distilled water. The reason why I want to heat it up is because I want to mix it with oil/wax and I don’t want the temperature to drop too low when I mix the two.

    @Gunther I wish I had an industrial tank. I am just doing a DIY project so I’m working with double boilers + pots/pans. I’ll keep playing around with my process and see how I can improve it. 

    Thanks

  • EVchem

    Member
    February 10, 2020 at 12:51 pm

    @PomadeCraft  not sure what you have, but if you have a scale, you can get a weight of the container you mix in. When you have added every ingredient, weigh the container +batch and subtract the weight of your container. Whatever remainder you have is your actual batch weight, and you should add back enough water to reach your original intended batch size.

    Ex. a 400g container and a 300g batch
    if  you  weigh the batch + container at the end and it doesn’t weigh 700g (say 690g), add 10g of water  and mix it in before pouring. Hope that makes sense!

  • bill_toge

    Member
    February 10, 2020 at 9:41 pm
    how big are your batches?
    if they’re more than a few hundred grams, the effect is insignificant
  • alchemist01

    Member
    February 14, 2020 at 8:25 pm

    Evaporating water probably shouldn’t be a part of your recipe, and if it is you should do before/after weights on a successful trial and replicate it that way.

    If you’re only heating water to combine an oil and water phase, you don’t need to heat it to the boiling point of water. Melt the waxes and any solid oils you need first, then combine them into hot water.

    Some water will obviously still evaporate but it should be negligible if you take it off heat after mixing.

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