My shea butter is grainy: help!

“Grainy lumps in my lip balm? Tiny little bits in my whipped butter? What is that?”

This question comes up quite often. Nobody likes grainy shea butter, but it happens, and quite frequently at that! Let us reassure you: it changes absolutely NOTHING about the product's effectiveness. The little grainy beads will disappear upon contact with the warmth of your skin. They can be found in all "quality grades" of shea butter, whether organic or not, refined or not. Yes, even in the ones from our online shop! It is not a question of quality. It is a question of chemistry!

What are these little lumps?

Is it an external contaminant? Has the shea butter gone rancid? Not at all! The little granules are simply the result of a temperature change, often cooling down too slowly, which causes crystallization in the butter’s molecular structure and, therefore, little lumps.

Vegetable butters (shea, mango, cocoa) all have different melting points. Inside each butter, there are different types of fatty acids, which also have different melting points. When a butter is heated, the fatty acids separate from one another. If the butter is cooled too slowly (on the counter instead of in the freezer, for example), these fractions can remain separated, giving the butter a grainy texture. Shea is particularly sensitive to this phenomenon!