How to thicken your handmade products
Castile Soap is awesome, especially Under Your Sink’s Liquid Castile Soap. Even though it’s a concentrate, it’s not extremely thick & can get a bit runny once diluted further.
Never fear, there are ways you can thicken your liquid creations – but you need to understand a few things first. Let me explain
If your using Castile Soap straight up – undiluted
You can use Castile Soap directly without diluting it down with water, but you may want to be light handed with the pump as its pretty concentrated. In this case, you can thicken your soap in two easy ways:
1) Essential Oils – Some Essential Oils will automatically thicken your soap like Eucalyptus and Lavender. On the other hand, some essential oils like citrus blends will thin it. I suggest doing a little test to see what the impact is before you start hitting the large quantities.
2) Saline Solution – the addition of good old iodised table salt will naturally thicken Castile Soap. The smallest amount is needed & there are no hard & fats rules. So, the best way to tackle it is to make a saline solution and add a tiny, tiny bit at a time to see what happens. Also bear in mind it thickens up more over time, so stop adding saline just before the consistency you want.
Note: This will only work with pure Castile Soap made from Olive Oil as the only oil.
If you are adding water to your Castile Soap – diluted
Adding water to Castile Soap will only ever thin it out (even if you have thickened it with the methods above) but it's a smart move to get the absolute most out of this liquid gold!
To thicken a solution of liquid Castile Soap & water you will need a little hand from Xanthan Gum, a natural thickening agent that is used in a lot of gluten free cooking.
You only need teeny weeny amount of this stuff to thicken your liquid, but it is a little tricky to mix without becoming clumpy and annoying. Google will give you a few tricks around creating a vortex with some type of blender, but one trick I have found works best is using Glycerine to emulsify the xanthan gum first – and then adding that to the liquid.
To thicken Any other water based products
Use the same method using Xanthan Gum and Glycerine for any other water based product. Note, if the water base is very low in may not thicken the entire product. Xanthan Gum will not thicken alcohol or alcohol bases.