4 thoughts on “Perfume Concentrations”

  1. Hello!
    Thank you for all this information. It’s really helping! One thing that bamboozles me is how to figure out how much alcohol (in weight) to add in order to turn a concentrate with some diluted materials into a specific strength of perfume (let’s say a 20% EDP). Do I count the alcohol in the dilution towards the final alcohol weight? For some reason I cannot see a simple way through this. Do you know if there are examples of how someone has done this online? I am sure there must be, but because I am a newbie my search terms are mad and not bringing up much useful material.
    Very best wishes
    Alex

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    • Hello Alex! The short answer is I don’t quite know. I’m still a beginner myself. I have found Karen Gilbert’s “Perfume: The Art and Craft of Fragrance” to be very accessible and helpful, because she has recipes for classic fragrances using pre-diluted sets of natural materials. Most of the dilutions call for a 20% dilution, and then she recommends what % of the final recipe that material should be. For example – a classic floral recipe uses all 20% dilutions of materials – and then uses 14% Bergamot(@20% dilution), 12% Mandarin (@20% dilution), 24% rose abs (@20% dilution), 24% Jasmine abs (20%), 6% Mimosa abs (@ 20%), 12% Benzoin (@20%), 6% Sandalwood (@20%) and 2% Orris (@20%). So – the entire end product would be 20% dilution. I’m not sure how to manage it if the math is more complex, lol! But this is certainly the “easy mode” approach. (Some very strong materials like Oakmoss she recs at 1% dilution, by the way. ) I wish I knew more! Best of luck to you!

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      • Hello!
        Ha! Thank you for taking time to read and answer my (probably) overly complicated question! I just and one of those moments when it rose up in my head and I thought – hmmm, but what about the alcohol in the dilutions?!?! Haha. I stumbled across Chris’s spreadsheet and thought yes – this will tell me somewhere. But it doesn’t. I actually couldn’t even find a column in his spreadsheet that told me how much grams of alcohol to add after the formulation is complete. I’ll get there! Have you came across any crazy hurdles like that that kept you awake for two night yet? lol!
        Very best wishes
        Alex

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