Let’s talk about homemade body butter today. If you are on the adventure of making your homemade salve, ointment, balm, body butter, you probably are not a stranger to this topic. Today’s entry is about how to fix a grainy or hardened homemade body butter, balm & salve.
The Science behind grainy body butter
Body butter, salve, ointment are basically made up of botanical butter and vegetable carrier oils. They are rich and nutritious, more importantly so easy to make! It has a long shelf life because it contains no water.
One thing we should know about homemade body butter is that it is very temperature dependant. The hardness and texture of the body butter are varied according to room temperature — higher temperature leads to softer texture, lower temperature leads to harder texture. This is due to the various fatty acids in botanic butter melting and cooling and solidifying at different temperatures.
For an example a typical shea butter contains the following fatty acids: oleic acid (40ā60%), stearic acid (20ā50%), linoleic acid (3ā11%), palmitic acid (2ā9%), linolenic acid (<1%) and arachidic acid (<1%) [source]
A typical cocoa butter contains Arachidic acid (C20:0)1.0%, Linoleic acid (C18:2)3.2%, Oleic acid (C18:1)34.5%, Palmitic acid (C16:0)26.0%, Palmitoleic acid (C16:1)0.3%, Stearic acid (C18:0)34.5%, Other Fatty Acids0.5%. [source].
This is why industry-made body butter has so many unknown chemicals as a stabiliser to maintain the texture of the body butter and just so that the texture is stable regardless of room temperature. But there’s always a fix for this problem in order to avoid adding unnecessary chemicals to stabilise it. Or you will just need a correct formulation to create a temperature stable body butter.
DIY TOOLS
To fix your natural butter and balm, you will need the below tools
- Double boiler [ US / Europe ]
- Silicone Spatula [ US / Europe ]
- Electronic balance [ US / Europe ]
- Original container of body butter
How to fix a Grainy Body butter/Balm/Salve
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Directions
- Scoop out the grainy, gritty butter, balm or salve
- Transfer it to a double boiler and weigh it on an electronic balance. ( Please tare the balance with the double-boiler on it, this step is to know the weight of the left over butter/balm/salve in the container)
- Add in beeswax /cera bellina wax ( 5% more in weight of the leftover butter/balm/salve) into the double boiler. For example, if the leftover butter is 80g, you will need 4g of waxes.
Note: You will probably need more or less, it all depends on the composition of your butter. Adding in beeswax or cera bellina wax will definitely prevent your body butter from melting down again and also the reappearance of the gritty and grainy texture. But please also beware that adding too much will give you a very hard body butter texture. In some cases, adding beeswax won’t help, will talk more about it in a future post. It is also possible to skip this step and get into step 4. (Get beeswax here!)
- Transfer it to a double boiler and warm it over a barely simmering water bath until the butter/balm/salve is totally melted and incorporated.
- Cool it down over a cold water bath without stopping stirring the liquid mixture. Stop stirring until you see the “trace”, decant it back to the original container. Pop it to the fridge to cold down the mixture faster. Else it will not set up probably.
How to fix a harden body butter/balm/Salve
Directions
- Scoop out your harden butter/balm/salve.
- Transfer it to a double boiler and weigh it on an electronic balance. ( Please tare the balance with the double-boiler on it, this step is to know the weight of the left over butter/balm/salve in the container)
- Add in a carrier oil of choice ( 10% more in weight of the leftover butter/balm/salve) into the double boiler. For example, if the leftover butter is 80g, you will need 8g of carrier oil.
Note: You will probably need more if the texture of the butter/balm/salve is still not to your satisfaction. - Warm it over a barely simmering water bath until the butter/balm/salve is totally melted and incorporated.
- Cool it down over a cold water bath without stopping stirring the liquid mixture. Stop stirring until you see the “trace”, decant it back to the original container.
What if the Body butter becomes grainy again?
The body butter could be gritty and grainy again when the weather gets warmer as it melts down slowly. But don’t throw it away, it doesn’t change all the goodness of natural body butter. For the summer, I suggest you just need to let it stay cool in the fridge. You can let it in room temperature until the weather gets colder again.
You can repeat the steps above to fix the grainy shea butter, but know that if it is exposed to heat and is not cooled quickly, there is a good chance the grittiness will return.
Remember
- Do not overheat your BUTTER. This could burn you and/or ruin your butters.
- DO NOT MICROWAVE IN THE ORIGINAL CONTAINER. You could damage it, as some of these containers are not microwave-safe.
Conclusion
Natural botanic butter is temperature dependant, that being said, with the weather getting warmer, you will not have a hardened butter problem but instead, you would probably have gritty butter due to the different melting points of the fat composition. But having hardened or grainy butter doesn’t change the phytochemical in it that gives us all the skin benefits. You will just need to restart the steps above to fix the problem. Or you will just need a whole new formulation to create a more temperature stable body butter, salve, or balm.
With these tricks, I invite you to jump right in and fix any grainy shea or other butters you may have, then have fun making skin care creations like:
- Lip Balms
- Lotion Bars
- Body Butters
- and more….
I would love to hear your feedback on this subject, please comment below if this blog helped you, and let me know your experience with your homemade body butter creations!
Grainy and harden body butter happens, but don’t stress it, just fix it!
Last but not least, happy “back-to-smooth-and-soft” butter day!
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Calleigh
Hi, I am Calleigh, MEng Chemical Engineering and a process engineer, and I'm here to show you how to DIY your skincare and household products with the correct formulation and using only natural ingredients. I believe that eating good food (Yes I have cooking recipes too!) and living in a chemical-free environment are the keys to having a healthy lifestyle. And that doesn't need to be expensive.
