Grainy Lip Balm

[NamaNama]

My dtr made some lip balm with all natural ingredients but when you put it on it feels a little grainy but then it turns smooth once it's on the lips. She used candelilla wax, cocoa butter, sweet almond oil, mango butter, avacado oil, hemp seed oil, jojoba esters and flavor oil. Can anyone give her some suggestions as to how to correct this?

[SpaceGirl]

How does she melt down her ingredients? That might help us figure out what is causiing the grainy-ness.

[LovelyLathers]

It's probably the mango butter. I melt mine to about 140 degrees and keep it melted on low heat for about 10 minutes to temper it. since I have been doing that I don't have any problems with it being grainy.

[stacien]

Try taking out the cocoa butter and subbing it with Shea butter or doubling the mango. Cocoa butter is an extremely hard butter it has to be successfully tempered like chocolate since they are the same family to get it right. Honestly for Lip balm its not worth the effort. Plus with cocoa butter it tends to over power the taste of the flavoring with its cocoa flavor.

[cellydaniel]

It happened to me too. I believe it's the mango butter. From what I have read, it is pretty similar to shea. It can get grainy if you don't handle it properly. To prevent your shea or mango from getting grainy, you need to cool your products fast. I usually refrigerate my lip balm or lotion bar container for 15 minutes before I fill it and I refrigerate them again once I am done. So far, that has worked for me.

Here is the mms site if you would like to read more :

http://www.thesage.com/catalog/FixedOil.html

Scroll to the middle of the page, right under the Shea butter.

HTH

Celly

[Jami]

I have been making lip balm for several months and didn't encounter any "graininess" (it is a word now if it wasn't before lol) UNTIL.......

I found a bag of some lip balms I made last month in my "stash". I went to put some on and had that little bit of grainy feeling that I KNOW wasn't there before. The balm is also a little harder that it was before. It does instantly melt when it hits the lips BUT I am wondering if the cooler weather has done something to it causing this.

I am making a new batch tomorrow to see what happens since our temps have dropped about 30 degrees.

[CareBear]

temperature shifts seem to trigger the graininess - especially if it goes through a few shifts.

[Ann M]

I used to use around 15% cocoa butter in my lip balm formula and found I was getting grains after a few months. I also use mango butter in my formula, but didn't think it was the mango causing the grains. I decided to try kokum butter instead of the cocoa. I only used 10% kokum instead of 15% and upped my mango to around 15%. This solved my problems. I really like the feel of kokum and there's no cocoa butter fragrance to worry about.

Ann M

[eugenia]

This recipe works well for me.

Beeswax 0.20 Shea 0.25 Cocoa 0.15 Castor 0.20 Avocado 0.20