New Perfume: Followup 2

    From my notes I see that I started this not yet publicly named project on December 28, 2018 -- not so long ago. There have been seven distinct versions. The first was very close to what I wanted but I wanted to see if I could make it a little more balanced, a little more blended, so I kept working. For the last month I've been using "Version 7" daily and have declared it the winner. But, at present, I have just a small amount in a single small bottle. Here's where the production routine kicks in.

    The first decision now is "how much should I make?" This is a two-part question. First the oil must be made and then the alcohol (or alcohol and water)  added. Working backward I must decide how many bottles I want to fill. Then, from this count, I multiply the bottles I want by the capacity of each bottle to give me the amount of finished fragrance I'll need. I'll add a little extra in case of some waste in filling and in case, ultimately, I want to fill a few extra bottles.

    I don't have big commercial dreams for my new fragrance. My goal is to be ready to fill about two dozen bottles but initially I'll just fill about half a dozen of them.

    Let's do a little math. I have three bottle options for this new fragrance. The bottles are on hand. Two hold one fluid ounce (about 29 ml) and the third holds 50 ml. To be on the conservative side in my production run I'll calculate the amount of finished fragrance needed to fill thirty 50 ml bottles.

    30 x 50 ml = 1500 ml which is 1.5 liters.

    So I'll need 1.5 liters of finished fragrance. This will easily fill twenty four 50 ml bottles, allow for some spills, and still leave me enough to fill several more bottles if needed.

    The finished fragrance will be produced by mixing the "Version 7" oil with alcohol and water. To calculate how much oil I'll need I must now decide what percentage of the finished fragrance will be oil and what percentage will be alcohol and water.

    Although this is a men's fragrance that might typically have 10 percent or less oil to 90 percent or more alcohol, I'm going to 20 percent oil as I've done quite successfully with other men's fragrances.
   
    Twenty percent of 1500 ml is 300 ml so I'll need 300 ml of my "Version 7" oil to blend with 1200 ml of alcohol and water.

    The alcohol will be 10 percent water -- 180 proof. To make this I'll blend 120 ml of de-ionized water with 1080 ml of 200 proof (pure) (SDA 40B) alcohol. I have both the alcohol and de-ionized water on hand. Blending the alcohol and water is the simple part of this operation.

    The oil, "Version 7", will be produced from its formula. But the original formula that produced the batch I'm currently enjoying, was measured out in drops -- drops from small dropper bottles. The "drops" formula must now be converted to a "percents" formula. This article and the accompanying video explain how this is done.

    I'll get to the next step in my next blog article. If you want to be notified when it comes out (it will be soon!) join my mailing list.