| Have you ever received a jug of oil and noticed a haze at the bottom? Don’t be alarmed. This can be common. It just means that stearines that are solid at room temperature have settled to the bottom. This is normal!
Some oils can also have material left over from the filtration process. This jug of Castor Oil has both stearines that have settled to the bottom as well as some charcoal from the filtration process. While I probably wouldn’t use what is on the bottom of the jug for lip balm or other similar products, it won’t hurt if used in soap. The charcoal will only make the soap a little darker in color. Say… that reminds me! I don’t think we have made a single oil soap made with Castor Oil. Let’s try that tomorrow!
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 The stearines and charcoal having settled in the jug of Castor Oil. |
I’ve seen stearines & other fatty solids (olive oil solidifies in the fridge for example)—but never, ever seen charcoal or other filtrate in an oil. I’d send it back if I did; wouldn’t you consider it a low quality oil to have extraneous matter in it?
Oh my goodness…my head just hit my monitor…
Thank you so much for blogging this post Taylor. I have seen this with castor, babusu (sp) and I think it was avocado. I thought it was mold so I threw them away as soon as I saw this blackish stuff at the bottom. Actually, I still have a half full gallon jug of castor still sitting on my shelf. It does smell off, but maybe my nose is telling me it’s off b/c of the blackish stuff at the bottom?? I bought another gallon from you to replace this ‘bad’ one.
If I had thought about it first – I should have wondered – “OK, wait a minute, just how would mold get into the jugs”? sheesh!
Thanks again Taylor!
Kathy R
@Judith – At the end of a series of drums that are filled with an oil, this will be more obvious than at the first of a pour. Considering the amount of time it takes for this to collect and be noticeable, we don’t feel this is a problem. We also consider how many people ask us for activated charcoal to use in their soaps. This type of gallon would be wonderful for those folks! Having said that we don’t see this as an alarm, we do know this is the last of a drum and the last drum of the series so we expect this. This is why this particular gallon was held aside and not sold. It still took almost 4 months of settling to get this amount of charcoal to develop. Will it cause a problem in your production? Very doubtful. Would the charcoal section be useful for lip balms? Probably not.
@Kathy – We live and learn each day. We have seen jugs of oil with mold, but it is obviously mold. Mold means water is also in the oil and the whole infected material becomes stringy, gelatinous and very disgusting looking. If you were to insert a pipette into this jug and draw up some of the castor oil you would see a very slight haze to the oil. If squirted on to a paper towel there may be some slight amount of gray appearance but it isn’t strong. This is not like a caked area of charcoal on the bottom. Any time you see something use a pipette and pull some out. Look closely and you will easily tell what is charcoal, what is mold and bacteria, and what is other extraneous matter.
Now we know! Education is a wonderful thing!