You might notice that my recipes look kinda weird, because they are all in percentages. There’s a method to my madness! I give all of my recipes as a formula. You will need to understand how to covert a formula into to a recipe and a recipe to a formula.
Some of the reasons are:
1. Math sucks! You are probably not going to make the same size batch as I am and this allows you to easily resize it.
2. You might not be using the same unit of measurements as me. For large batches of soap, I will use ounces, but for small batches of lotion I will use grams. It’s weird, I know.
3. It makes it easier to swap out ingredients and make changes.
4. When you are formulating a new product, it is going to be easier to write it as a formula than as a recipe. You want to ensure that you are following the manufactures recommendations for the use rate percentages. For me, it just follows a path of logic to learn to write them this way
So….. This is how you can convert a recipe
Let’s say you want to convert the Beginner Lotion Recipe into an 8 oz batch.
Take your batch size, in this case 8 oz. and multiply by the percentages. For the distilled water it would be 8*.77=6.16 oz
Converted Ingredients for 8 oz
Distilled Water 77% or 6.16 oz
Sweet Almond Oil 5.5% or .44 oz
Rice Bran Oil 5.5% or .44 oz
Emulsifying Wax NF 5% or .4 oz
Stearic Acid 4% or .32 oz
Preservative 1% or .08 oz
Fragrance 2% or .16 oz
Notice that this adds up to be the 8 oz. batch that you wanted to make.
Swapping Out Ingredients
Let’s say that your preservative calls for .5% not 1% usage rate.
What you will want to do is decrease the percent for the preservative to .5%.
This will make your formula not add up. It will be 99.5%…. just add the missing .5% to the water phase.
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