How to make a coffee hydrogel scrub

Coffee scrub is one of the most amazing and sustainable personal care products but unfortunately you can not use coffee in a water based product because:

1- It will become soft and slimy and would not work as an exfoliant at all

2- It increases the risk of contamination

During the past I make a few versions of waterless coffee scrub such as this one but recently I had the mood to use a water based scrub and I badly wanted coffee in it. I went ahead and cheated and combined the brazil nut scrub (which looks like coffee with the advantage of not becoming soft nor increasing the risk of contamination) and the scent and antioxidants of the Coffee CO2 extract.

Here is the divine combination that even those who do not like drinking coffee (myself included) will still love to use.

Formulation:

Procedure:

1- Prepare each phase separately in a beaker

2- Add the powder phase to the hydrosol phase @RT. You can use a spatula, a magnetic stirrer or an overhead stirrer for this purpose

3- After all of the powder is dissolved it is time to disperse the gum. You can proceed with gum dispersion and hydration but as I have explained in this post, when working with sclerotium (amigum), the viscosity is higher and the texture is significantly smoother when the dispersion and hydration are done @35- 40 ^oC. This is how I made the scrub:

4- Heat the hydrosol phase (in which the powder phase is dissolved) to 35-40 ^oC. Slowly add the gum (an overhead stirrer is the best way). When all of the gum is added let the gum disperse at this temperature for 30-45 minutes

5- Stop heating and slowly and little by little add the surfactant phase. Avoid agitation. You don't want to create any foam at this stage

6- Prepare a 10% dilution of the gel in distilled water and measure the pH. I know by experience that the pH will be above seven so I spared myself this step.

7- Add the preservative

8- Make another dilution and measure the pH after adding the preservative. In our case it was 5,65 which is slightly higher than our range (5,2-5,5)

9- Adjust the pH in range according to the preservative. I used lactic acid to bring the pH to 5,44.

10- After adjusting the pH add the exfoliant

11- Take your stability and micro kit samples and fill the rest in suitable containers. You can use disk top, screw cap or lotion pump bottles.

Watch this video for detailed instruction

BeHappy and have fun