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Charcoal Shampoo Bar Recipe

Try this purifying shampoo enriched and colored with activated charcoal! Made with mild surfactants and light oils, this shampoo bar is perfect to deeply clean your scalp and/or help with irritated, itchy scalp.
With the addition of cosmetic grade salicylic acid, this shampoo can even help control and treat dandruff. A cleansing but mild shampoo with pH 5.5, the right one for your hair. Formulated for irritated, itchy scalp and dandruff, but adequate for all hair types.
Dificulty: Easy
Weight: 100g
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Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 35 minutes
Method: Syndet Bar
Cosmetic: Syndet Bar
Servings: 1 shampoo bar (100g)
Cost: $4,3 / 4€

Equipment

Ingredients

Solid Ingredients

Liquid Ingredients

Cooling Phase Ingredients

Instructions

Preparations and Good Practices

  • Learn how to make a syndet bar in How Do You Make a Syndet Bar? or watch the video above. They don't have a recipe but explain in general the steps and ingredients to produce a syndet bar.
    How Do You Make a Syndet bar
  • Disinfect all your equipment before starting. You can boil some of your equipment (like the double boiler, glass cups, spoons), and use a solution of 1 liter of water with 1/2 cup of bleach, for items that are not heat-resistant (like the milk frother, plastic cups or the lotion containers)
    Disinfect-equipment
  • Measure all ingredients and prepare your workstation. Wear a mask as the SCI releases an irritant dust cloud
  • For this recipe, I have used natural aloe vera gel, collected directly from a aloe vera leaf

Liquid Phase

  • Put a pan with water into the stove (any water as this is for bagne-marie)
    pan-with-water-for-bagne-marie
  • Add the liquid ingredients (betaine, neem oil, water and aloe vera gel) into the double boiler or a metal jug. Let it heat in low heat. do not heat above 50ºC - 122ºF

Solid Phase

  • Weight all solid ingredients: SCI (wear a mask), the activated charcoal and the salicylic acid powder.
  • Without removing the double boiler from heat, add the solid ingredients, roughly 1/3 at a time. You can eye ball it, as this is only to ease mixing and melting the solid ingredients. Mix well with a spoon or whisker each time you add a portion of solid ingredients, until you have an homogeneous paste.
  • Mix and heat the mixture in low heat until it has the consistency of homogeneous mush or porridge. Add 1 or 2 teaspoons of distilled water if the mixture is too thick. You will have to be patient as this step takes time.
  • Remove the double boiler or jug from heat. Mix a bit to cool down the mixture.

Make Your Bars

  • At around 40ºC-50ºC (104ºF-122ºF), add the cooling phase ingredients: essential oils, and preservative. Mix well.
  • Take a small spoon of the mixture (1/8 tsp) and rub some water in it. Use a pH strap to measure pH. Should be 5-6. Salicylic acid can lower pH below these values.
  • If pH is too high add a teaspoon of lemon juice or citric acid dissolved in water. If pH is too low, add one teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in water. Mix very well and measure the pH again.
    adding-citric-acid-with-water
  • When pH is corrected (should be 5.5, or at least between 5 and 6), pour the mixture into soap molds. After unmolding let them dry for 2 or 3 days.
  • This purifying shampoo bar is ready to use!

Video

Tried this recipe?Send a pic to @herbalcochete!