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Ok, so—thoughts? I’ve been heating & holding for a while now, but if you’ve been reading the blog for more than a year you’ll know I definitely haven’t always done it. I found this article from Formula Botanica really interesting—it makes some great points. What do you guys think?
How interesting! I’m so new to the whole making emulsions and lotions thing that I’ve never had a chance to know much about the practice of heating and holding. Actually, I normally just blitz my oil and water parts in the microwave… (hides face in shame). But the article does make a lot of sense.
I wonder if heat and hold started because people didn’t want to bother checking their ingredients to see if they had an exception that required it? Sometimes laziness causes people to go to a lot of unnecessary trouble. XP
When I first started making lotions, one of the blogs I read insisted that the temperatures MUST be identical. Not even a degree off. And holy Hannah I wasted a lot of time trying. Making anything lotions or cosmetics over a gas stove that only has two settings (flame thrower and off) really tried my patience.
So, then I did what I usually do. Played. I used boiled water (found it easier to get the glycerine, silk and all incorporated) and waited till the oils and ewax were all melted. Then tossed the liquid into the oils and mixed. And then threw out my thermometers. It worked like a charm! I then tried again with room temperature liquid and melted oils, and found that I had to work faster as the cooler water caused the oils to cool down too fast and had to put it back in the double boiler. I’ve even done the unimaginable! Poured my water and oils and additives into the same Pyrex and heated up that way to melt the ewax. I still had some great lotion, but I swear I could feel the silk stuff.
Now, I am less fussy with the temperatures, but I still prefer warmerish water over cold/cold and my oils melted in two Pyrexs. It just depends on the recipe I am making too.
It’s like all things DIY. You start off doing it “by the book” but after a while, you throw that book out. Just like soaping! How many of us really use thermometers to make soap?
I used to melt my oils part and make my water part with just-boiled water; once the oils had melted, I’d add the water part to the saucepan, heat that through, and blend away (often with just a whisk!). And those were all fine. As long as I was using a complete e-wax, nothing ever split on me, and the shelf life didn’t seem noticeably different from what I get now.
My hypothesis here is that complete e-waxes are about as dummy-proof as it gets; perhaps heat & hold was developed more for more ornery emulsifiers? I know the beeswax/borax emulsion is a much bigger pain in the behind and requires much more attention to temperature and much more vigorous blending; that one MUST be made in a blender—whisking = splitting. And that lotion is so darn greasy that cleaning out that blender is all kinds of gross haha.
Lol! I watched your video of the beeswax as an ewax and I cringed when you said you needed to do the exact same thing so we’re going to use your immersion blender. I cringed. All I could think about was how will you ever get your blender de-beeswaxed?
I agree on the complete ewaxs these days. I think they are pretty dummy proof.
I guess I heat, but don’t hold. I’m too impatient to wait that long! I do try to make sure they two phases are around the same temperature, because I have had some lotion fails when they were too different. And that just makes me sad☹️
I tried to read the entire article, honest, but all those big words at this hour of the night just made my head swim.
So I just make sure the water and oils turn white when I add them together. And let it sit one minute to be sure and that’s it.
My second lotion attempt never quite emulsified because the water and oil were not the same temp. I still have that lotion cause I can’t throw it out. It’s Marie’s lemon cleanser cream she posted years ago. It’s a nice cleaner if I give it a good shake 🙂.I heat my oils and water to 70°C, but don’t heat and hold. As long as I’m using a complete preservative (currently optiphen plus), I’ve never had any spoilage or seperation. However, so far I’ve been using up my lotions within a year, so I don’t know how long the shelf life would be if extended past that.
It’s been quite a few months since Marie first posted this article. I’ve done a lot of reading both for and against heat and holding.
I am curious if anyone has been swayed one way or another?
I still do it the same way….heat both the water and oil phases until everything is completely melted/dissolved/whatever and then combine. I don’t even use a thermometer anymore, just do it like Marie does in her videos. Works like a charm and have had zero fails doing it this way. I don’t know if this is heat and hold, but it’s my way of doing it and it works for me. If I try to do it any other way (say, via microwave…), it’s crash and burn!
I’ve not used a microwave in…. forever!
I’m still doing it the mighty same way I’ve been doing it since I began lotion making. Liquid and Oil Phase get to take a bath, while I get the Extras phase ready. I wait for things to melt, then wait a little longer than that, and then combine while still in the double boiler. I stir for a moment, then remove from heat then attack it with my immersion blender.
I’m still going with dummy proof are thy modern ewaxes!
Definitely still using the dummy-proof ewaxes! Haven’t even tried to do the HLB system. That flies right over my head…..
Ok. So what is the HLB system?
I’m going to post a new thread in the experiment&wondering section… follow me!
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