Another stab at CB-Xcel feedback

[topofmurrayhill]

I don't suppose many will remember, but I miss the days of member HenryK testing NGI waxes. They got scoped out pretty well at the time. The straight soy, whatever it was called, wasn't great and is now gone. The CB-135 soy/cottonseed wax worked better but was still pretty unstable over time, and the CB-Advanced looked pretty and didn't throw worth a damn.

 

I haven't tried any NGI waxes for a long time, but I did some searching for impressions of the CB-Xcel and the information seemed vague, so I thought I'd try again to open a topic. Mainly I would love to hear from people who are using it for wicked container candles and not blending it with another wax or using additives.

 

In a nutshell, I think the main claim for CB-X is that it combines the prettiness and stability of CB-A (e.g., doesn't frost when the candle is made or morph in bad ways over time), but has a good scent throw. How accurate would you say that claim is?

 

I also noticed some complaints about candles sweating and was wondering if that's a real and persistent issue.

[moonshine]

My experience with excel years ago was that it was so easy to make a beautiful candle but couldn't smell a hint of fragrance when burning- and I used many FO's from different suppliers

And many different wicks

I cannot comment on it morphing or turning ugly because I didn't keep it around long enough

I have tried it blended with PB for melts and it great throw for that

I used 464 for many years and had the problem of it turning ugly and growing to the point of burying the wicks over time along with burn issues and that's when I went to 415- love it and will never go back! Lol

I did love 464 though- easy pretty candles but for some reason I always problems

[Joannec]

Hi,

I tested excel for a few months a while back and i found that cd wicks worked best in it .

I had a few problems with it , first it did sweat with some fragrances , I made up candles with excel and c3 to test side by side and the candles that was made with excel would sweat , not in all fragrances but some whereas the c3 never sweated at all.

Also when I got all my testing completed and ordered another big batch of the excel it didn't behave anything like the previous batch , my previous wicks didn't work anymore and some of my candles appeared to have a scrambled egg appearance on top this was using the same oil and methods I had previously used with success.

I did get good ht with my candles , i found the ct wasn't as good as c3 though . After the second batch I decided not to continue as I didn't want to use a wax that was that inconsistent . Hope this helps .

[topofmurrayhill]

Thanks very much moonshine and Joannec!

 

My experience with excel years ago was that it was so easy to make a beautiful candle but couldn't smell a hint of fragrance when burning- and I used many FO's from different suppliers
And many different wicks

 

That's like CB-Advanced. Too bad.

 

 

I used 464 for many years and had the problem of it turning ugly and growing to the point of burying the wicks over time along with burn issues 

 

I can't remember where I got the idea that CB-135 is soy/cottonseed. Maybe that's wrong. I doubt because 464 sounds so similar. I stashed some CB-135 candles and in less than a year they frosted up and the wax swelled until the wicks were disappearing. The burn also changed. Kinda made me doubt the whole idea of soy wax if you can count on a candle staying anything like the way you made it.

 

When you hear about polymorphism (which literally translates, "taking different forms") in connection with these waxes, that's what they are talking about. A solid vegetable oil like soy can remain the same oil but still rearrange itself microscopically to have a different appearance, different texture, different volume and a different melting point.

 

So I guess you've had better luck with straight 415 soy wax? I've stashed away a few like that and put them out of my mind for a few years and found they held up fine except for a little extra frosting.

[Joannec]

I live in the UK and I can only get the NGi waxes or the c3 wax , we can't get golden brands here which is a shame as I read so many good reviews about them on here .

[moonshine]

Thanks very much moonshine and Joannec!

That's like CB-Advanced. Too bad.

I can't remember where I got the idea that CB-135 is soy/cottonseed. Maybe that's wrong. I doubt because 464 sounds so similar. I stashed some CB-135 candles and in less than a year they frosted up and the wax swelled until the wicks were disappearing. The burn also changed. Kinda made me doubt the whole idea of soy wax if you can count on a candle staying anything like the way you made it.

When you hear about polymorphism (which literally translates, "taking different forms") in connection with these waxes, that's what they are talking about. A solid vegetable oil like soy can remain the same oil but still rearrange itself microscopically to have a different appearance, different texture, different volume and a different melting point.

So I guess you've had better luck with straight 415 soy wax? I've stashed away a few like that and put them out of my mind for a few years and found they held up fine except for a little extra frosting.

135 I also used for awhile and I really liked that also but yes over time same thing as 464- many people have such great luck with 464 but my luck has fallen with 415- I have candles 5 years old and nothing has changed except some frost and some that have exposed to sun yellowed....now when I first started with it I had horrible experiences of how they looked- seriously they were like something out of a horror film but I mastered baby butt smooth candles after awhile working with it and pretty much frost free(I do not dye) with the exception of some oils I do get wet spots and minor frosting but the scent throw IMO is the best in all soy I have tried

[Candybee]

I kept thinking I must have tried this wax at some point. Then I remembered it was the CB Advanced and not the Excel. The CBA didn't impress me at all. Sure it made lovely candles but no throw. Oh... I think 1 or 2 bakery brulee type scents threw okay but nothing else. I dropped it fairly fast. I think that is why when the Excel came out I was in no rush to try it... and so far have not heard any reviews that tell me its worth trying.

 

I'm sticking with container palm. I don't get 'bloom' with it and soy just doesn't have that luminescent glow that palm has.

[awnl]

I've tried to make the transition from all Paraffin to a soy or even a soy blend using CB Advanced ad Excel. I'm disappointed in the lack hot and cold throw. It's defeating the problem by having to add more fragrance just to compensate for the lack soy property composition . I've even tried to blend it with straight paraffin, 6006, CB129 &CB 130, still not a strong scent throw. Maybe. I' m to picking in the expectation of scent throw that I would normally get from my paraffin .

It is my hope to somehow figure this out.

If a manufacture was able to make soy wax act like paraffin ... it would be a gold mine fort them .

[moonshine]

I've tried to make the transition from all Paraffin to a soy or even a soy blend using CB Advanced ad Excel. I'm disappointed in the lack hot and cold throw. It's defeating the problem by having to add more fragrance just to compensate for the lack soy property composition . I've even tried to blend it with straight paraffin, 6006, CB129 &CB 130, still not a strong scent throw. Maybe. I' m to picking in the expectation of scent throw that I would normally get from my paraffin .

It is my hope to somehow figure this out.

If a manufacture was able to make soy wax act like paraffin ... it would be a gold mine fort them .

Isn't it funny different perceptions of throw and what works and what doesn't - I have never tried straight paraffin but I have tried parasoys and to me the soy is stronger....but maybe it's because soy is what I started with- plus I can't get past the black soot I get in parasoy- still plugging away at it because I do know from commercial candle experience paraffin can be way stronger than soy and I like the idea of being able to color without major ugly issues! Lol

Just gotta find that perfect wick and I do need to dive into plain old straight up paraffin one of these days

[topofmurrayhill]

Yep, CB-A is a dud. There's not much point in blending it with petroleum waxes. Once you find yourself experimenting with that, you might as well be doing it with a straight raw material like GW415 instead of whatever they concoct CB-A out of. I guess I'm going to write off CB-X as another also-ran. NGI's gobbledy-gook about "molecular blueprinting to control polymorphism" seems more like "molecular sabotage to prevent scent throw."

 

I might revisit 415 though. Despite its reputation, I got some good test pours out of it. I always figured it would be as badly-behaved as some other products over time, but that didn't turn out to be true.

 

I'm starting to wonder if products like CB-135 and others morph over time *because* of their additives instead of despite them. Maybe those mono- and diglycerides like in "USA" make a prettier candle in the short run that tends to go haywire in a long run. Kind of a deal with the devil.

[moonshine]

lol- I think your right

I do use USA with 415 but not a lot....the candles without it are so ugly it makes my eyes hurt to look at them and I have no issues like the others deforming over time

C3 is supposed to be another good one- I couldn't get as good of throw as 415 and I had little bubbles form after cure but I think if I would have spent more time with it I could of made it work well

[Candybee]

NGI's gobbledy-gook about "molecular blueprinting to control polymorphism" seems more like "molecular sabotage to prevent scent throw."

 

I think this was discussed right after the wax came out and the general consensus was its all marketing buzzwords. No one really understood what in the heck it was supposed to mean. Besides, whatever, its not all that and a bag of chips anyway.

[topofmurrayhill]

I think this was discussed right after the wax came out and the general consensus was its all marketing buzzwords. No one really understood what in the heck it was supposed to mean. Besides, whatever, its not all that and a bag of chips anyway.

 

WARNING: Info that may be interesting or not follows. 

 

I think I know more or less what it means, because there's a lot of related information in the food industry about it. The issue for food is how to create margarine and shortening that has the right appearance, texture and functionality (correct melting point, creaming properly with sugar to make fluffy baked goods, or whatever). It's a different industry, but the products are comparable (Golden Brands is a food company). The way a can of shortening or tub of margarine looks when you open it is the same as for us pouring a perfect soy candle.

 

The three types of crystal states solid oil can be in are called alpha, beta-prime and beta. One state can turn into the next in that order, and for many solid fats the tendency is to go all the way to beta crystals. You could say that's the most stable form of the fat, where it feels most at peace. Until then it's a little antsy and wants to change. Unfortunately, what candlemakers and food companies consider perfect is the beta-prime state, which is very creamy and uniform. The beta state for us is frosting, swelling and tunneling. In shortening and margarine, the beta state is called graininess.

 

One thing that the food industry does to keep things nice and beta-prime is called tempering. It's mainly a process of keeping the fat at a very steady 85 degrees or so for a few days from the time it starts to harden. If you treat it like that in its childhood, it becomes happier with itself and resists morphing later when it's subjected to more random environmental conditions.

 

In addition, there's a more complicated science of optimizing the chemical makeup of the fat so that it naturally tends towards a stable beta-prime state and doesn't yearn so much to be beta. This can involve not only blending but chemically merging more than one fat (interesterification) so that the product not only has a certain optimal fatty acid composition, but even that the individual triglycerides should be of the right types. Each of those has three fatty acids, so there can be many different combinations of fatty acids in one triglyceride molecule. It turns out that certain combinations make the fat tend more towards the desirable beta-prime state. Controlling that is a very sophisticated approach to the problem.

 

So what NGI is referring to with their marketing is probably the stuff of the previous paragraph. Obviously, if they were selling shortening for baking, they would be awesome at it. Unfortunately, as candle wax, their products don't throw scent. Oh well.

[Candybee]

....and I always thought shortening looked so creamy and rich from the hydrogenation and being 'extruded' to look something like thick cream or frosting in the can.

[topofmurrayhill]

....and I always thought shortening looked so creamy and rich from the hydrogenation and being 'extruded' to look something like thick cream or frosting in the can.

 

Yeah it's actually the type of crystal polymorphs it contains.

 

These days it's not hydrogenated because it turns out eating that stuff makes you clutch your chest and die. The middle molecule in the pic below is the oleic acid you know from soaping. It's mono-unsaturated because there is one double bond where there could potentially be another hydrogen atom (polyunsaturated would have more than one double bond). On the bottom is trans-oleic acid, which has the same chemical formula but the orientation of the double bond has changed and the whole thing has a different shape. That "trans-fatty acid" is produced by hydrogenation (adding a hydrogen to 18:2 linoleic acid) and doesn't exist in nature. Your body doesn't deal with it well, so they had to start using other means to solidify liquid oil.

 

If the oil was completely hydrogenated, all the oleic would be saturated and you would end up with stearic acid as pictured on top. With saturated fatty acids like that, there's no way to reorient anything. Fully hydrogenated oils have no trans-fats, but they're too hard and high-melting to be useful as food. However, you can add some of it to liquid, non-hydrogenated oil and do that "transesterification" trick where the fatty acids get re-shuffled between all the triglycerides. That gives you a solidified oil with the right properties and no trans-fats.

 

Soy wax could be made either way and I don't know what they do these days. I suppose if you are making a higher-melting shortening that nobody wants to eat anymore, selling it as candle wax could be a good idea.

 

[Chefmom]

It's funny that you talk about food shortening and soy wax together.  In my humble opinion, and with my very trained nose....and my many years in the commercial baking industry....Nature's Garden's Joy wax has the exact same smell and texture, creaminess as the doughnut frying shortening I used to put in the fryer when I was the Midnight Doughnut Girl....

 

I only ever tried one slab, and gave up quickly with it because every candle I made had an "essence of doughnut" scent to it...great with cookies or baked bread scents....but it made me ill with lilac....

[topofmurrayhill]

It's funny that you talk about food shortening and soy wax together.  In my humble opinion, and with my very trained nose....and my many years in the commercial baking industry....Nature's Garden's Joy wax has the exact same smell and texture, creaminess as the doughnut frying shortening I used to put in the fryer when I was the Midnight Doughnut Girl....

 

I only ever tried one slab, and gave up quickly with it because every candle I made had an "essence of doughnut" scent to it...great with cookies or baked bread scents....but it made me ill with lilac....

 

Ha! That's funny. There's no reason it couldn't be the exact same stuff. You would know if anyone would.

[Candybee]

Chefmom its funny you mention the smell. I know when I am melting soy wax in my meltor it sizzles and pops like cooking oil when it heats up. Plus it begins to give off this deep fryer scent like someone is getting ready to fry some chicken or something.

 

I always thought that soy wax makes the most outstanding bakery scented candles but doesn't have that same wow factor with other scents particularly florals. Nice to know its not just me.