Unrefined Shea butter popularity

One of the most popular ingredients used to make soaps, cosmetics, moisturizing products like creams and lotions, salves, has to be shea butter.

Shea Butter is a very unique butter.  Unrefined Shea butter  starts out in the nut of a tree that grows mainly in the Savanna grasslands that run all across  Africa. These perennial trees, known as the African shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa) are not cultivated; they grow wild - starting out as seedlings dispersed by the winds, and birds, and water.  They are harvested once a year after the nuts, or the fruit falls from the trees. As the nuts fall, they are gathered, typically by local women from nearby villages who dry them, then crush them and take the inner nuts out of a shell. The nuts are then dried, and cracked and the butter roasted -  constantly stirred so as not to burn the shea butter as it is worked. before they are crushed in to a "butter." Water is added to the process as the butter is further cleaned and worked. The butters and oils float to the top and are taken out and molded in to balls. Sometimes after this process the shea butter might be taken to someone, or a company  that is buying their shea butter in the area, that will heat it up again in water and further clean it and package it so that the shea butter is of the best quality to ship to and sell in to markets all over the world. 

How to identify the best unrefined Shea butter - appearance and color and fragrance

The very best quality unrefined shea butter processors will not use any bleaching products, any chemicals, to change the appearance of the shea butter. Nor will any deodorizers like fragrances be used to change the scent of pure unrefined Shea Butter. 

Pure unrefined shea butter has a very distinct look  and aroma. The raw, unrefined shea butter has a particular clean but slightly earthy, often nutty aroma. 

Finding and buying a good quality unrefined shea butter can be a challenge. The most simply processed unrefined shea butter is the best shea butter. But you must find a shea butter that has been through a simple process to make sure the product is clean, and has no impurities that might damage the long term stability of the product. If you buy a shea butter that is not free of discolorations,  free of particles of debris, or has an odor other than the typical scent of good quality shea butter, then keep looking. Good quality unrefined shea butter can vary in color from an off white to different shades of a beige. Since it is a natural product that is to be expected. The shea butter, typically,should have a nice firm buttery feel to it. 

Aside from the commercial aspects of Shea butter, keen consumers know that when they buy top quality, ethically produced unrefined shea butter, there is also a human element as well. Shea butter has been a very important part of the communities where it is gathered and processed. Shea butter is not just a commercial product to be sold there. The harvesting, the simple processing, are as important as the usefulness of the product itself. Shea butter not only produces an economic benefit to those that harvest, process and package it is a part of the lives of everyone in the community and regions all across the African continent where the trees grow.

When you purchase unrefined shea butter from sellers that buy directly from local villages you then are directly supporting the people whose lives touch it as it makes its way from the villages in Ghana, Nigeria, or Uganda in Eastern Africa.

Our Unrefined Shea Butter is purchased direct from a village in Ghana, where it is packaged and then shipped direct in to the United States. it is an excellent quality having the distinctive color and odor of top quality unrefined shea butter. 

When you buy the  unrefined shea butter from www.makeyourown.buzz we think you will be pleased with the quality and value.